Search results

4314 results found.

Notes on SAT Scores



David S. Kahn:

Colleges across the country are reporting a drop in SAT scores this year. I’ve been tutoring students in New York City for the SAT since 1989, and I have watched the numbers rise and fall. This year, though, the scores of my best students dropped about 50 points total in the math and verbal portions of the test (each on a scale of 200 to 800). Colleges and parents are wondering: Is there something wrong with the new test? Or are our children not being taught what they should know?
Before 1994, the verbal section of the SAT was about 65% vocabulary (55 out of 85 questions) and 35% reading comprehension. Then the Educational Testing Service shortened and reworked the test, devoting half of the 78 questions to each area. Last year ETS changed the test again, and now it is heavily skewed toward reading: 49 of the 68 items require students to read, synthesize and answer questions.
In such a way, ETS has increased the penalty for not reading throughout one’s school years. Studying vocabulary lists before the test–a long-favored shortcut to lifting scores–just won’t cut it anymore. Students who read widely and often throughout their elementary and high-school years develop the kinds of reading skills measured by the new SAT. Students who avoid reading don’t–and can’t develop them in a cram course.




Unlikely Allies (“against” NCLB)



Let the Dialogue Begin
Bridging Differences A Dialogue Between Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch
May 24, 2006
By Deborah Meier & Diane Ravitch
In the course of the last 30 years, the two of us have been at odds on any number of issues – on our judgments about progressive education, on the relative importance of curriculum content (what students are taught) vs. habits of mind (how students come to know what they are taught), and most recently in our views of the risks involved in nationalizing aspects of education policy.
Meeting recently to prepare for a debate on the federal No Child Left Behind Act, however, we found ourselves agreeing about the mess that has been generated by local and state testing. Both of us agreed that the public needs far better information about both inputs and outcomes, without which the public is woefully uninformed and too easily manipulated. As we discussed what the next policy steps should be, Diane preferred a national response, and Deborah preferred a local one.
As we talked further, we were surprised to discover that we shared a similar reaction to many of the things that are happening in education today, especially in our nation’s urban school districts. Recent trends and events seem to be confirming our mutual fears and jeopardizing our common hopes about what schooling might accomplish for the nation’s children. We might, we agreed, be getting the worst of both our perspectives.
Unlike Deborah, Diane has long supported an explicit, prescribed curriculum, one that would consume about half the school day, on which national examinations would be based. Diane believes in the value of a common, knowledge-based curriculum, such as the Core Knowledge curriculum, that ensures that all children study history, literature, mathematics, science, art, music, and foreign language; such a curriculum, she thinks, would support rather than undermine teachers’ work. Deborah, while strongly agreeing on the need for a broad liberal arts curriculum, doubts that anyone can ensure what children will really understand and usefully make sense of, even through the best imposed curriculum, especially if it is designed by people who are far from the actual school communities and classrooms.
Yet both of us are appalled by the relentless “test prep” activities that have displaced good instruction in far too many urban classrooms, and that narrow the curriculum to nothing but math and reading. We are furthermore distressed by unwarranted claims from many cities and states about “historic gains” that are based on dumbed-down tests, even occasionally on downright dishonest scoring by purposeful exclusion of low-scoring students.What unites us above all is our conviction that low-income children who live in urban centers are getting the worst of both of our approaches.

(more…)




Lighting and Daylighting in School Buildings, Workshop, June 23



With the MMSD considering an addition to Leopold Elementary and a new west side high school, the fabulous Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair in Custer, Wisconsin (just 7 miles east of Stevens Point) offers a relevant presentation titled Lighting and Daylighting in School Buildings. The Fair program describes the presentation:

Learn to evaluate the light needed for the activity at hand. Plus, gain some tips on daylighting — using a bit of the most abundant, accessible and predictable renewable resource available to us.

The presentation will be offered on Friday, June 23, at 12:00 noon. The presenter Bob Drevlow works with the Focus on Energy Schools Program.
Daylighting saves electricity without adding cost to a school, as demonstrated by Clackamas High School in Clackamas, Oregon.




Hang it Up



Jesse Scaccia:

YOU’RE a teacher in the New York City public school system. It’s September, and you’re lecturing the class on the structure of an essay. Your students need to know this information to pass your class and the Regents exam, and you, of course, hope that one day your talented students will dazzle and amaze English professors all over the country.
You turn your back to write the definition of “thesis” on the chalk board. It takes about 15 seconds. You turn around to the class expecting to see 25 students scribbling the concept in their notebook. Instead, you see a group of students who have sprung appendages of technology.
Jose has grown an earphone. Maria’s thumbs have sprouted a two-way. Man Keung, recently arrived from China, is texting away on a cellphone connected to his wrist. And Christina appears to be playing Mine Sweeper on a Pocket PC on her lap.




2006 / 2007 MMSD Food Service Budget Discussion



28 minute video excerpt of this evening’s discussion of the MMSD’s food service budget (the food service budget is evidently supposed to break even, but the operating budget has apparently been subsidizing it by several hundred thousand dollars annually).

This sort of excellent citizen oversite is essential to any publicly financed organization, particularly one that plans to spend $332M in taxpayer funds next year and hopes to pass referenda in the near future.
Former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin made a similar case today when he discussed our fair city’s water problems:

It’s funny how progressives forget their history and the reason for doing things. The idea is to have a citizen board, not a board with public employees. That is part of the checks and balances. In fact the progressive left in Madison went though considerable time over the years gradually removing city staff from committees so they would not dominate and squelch the citizens who are more likely to be ‘whistleblowers.’

In the water example, a citizen spent years chasing this issue, finally getting the attention of the traditional media and the politicians.
A number of board members have been asking many questions (the video clip will give you a nice overview of who is asking the questions and what the responses are). You can check the action out here (Each “Tab” is a question to the Administration, with their response”). For example, we learn in tab 11 2 Page PDF that the district spent a net (after 200K in gate receipts and 450K in student fees) $1,433,603 on athletics in 2005/2006 and plans to spend a net $1,803,286 in 2006/2007, a 25% increase. The overall budget will grow by more than 3%.
This is quite a change from past years, and provides some hope for the future.




Let them Eat Kale



The Economist:

Plans to improve school meals are causing havoc
JUST over a year ago, Jamie Oliver, a camera-friendly chef, called for a revolution in school kitchens. In a television series, he chronicled the decline in school lunches and showed that junk food-addicted children could be taught to tuck into what he calls “pukka nosh”. It proved a traumatic experience for the young gourmands, some of whom demonstrated for the return of chips and burgers. Mr Oliver’s antics have also tweaked the government, upset some dinner ladies and shaken the catering market.
“Jamie’s School Dinners” galvanised parents, who demanded that schools ditch grotesque inventions such as the Turkey Twizzler and adopt wholesome fare such as shepherd’s pie and lentil soup. Worried about a looming general election, the government hastily responded to Mr Oliver’s demands. Ruth Kelly, who was then the education secretary, promised to ban junk food in schools and asked a panel of experts to suggest nutritional guidelines.

(more…)




Schools in seven Wisconsin metro areas rated highly



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




Acting White



by ROLAND G. FRYER

“Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.”

—Barack Obama, Keynote Address, Democratic National Convention, 2004
Acting white was once a label used by scholars, writing in obscure journals, to characterize academically inclined, but allegedly snobbish, minority students who were shunned by their peers.
Now that it has entered the national consciousness—perhaps even its conscience—the term has become a slippery, contentious phrase that is used to refer to a variety of unsavory social practices and attitudes and whose meaning is open to many interpretations, especially as to who is the perpetrator, who the victim.
I cannot, in the research presented here, disentangle all the elements in the dispute, but I can sort out some of its thicker threads. I can also be precise about what I mean by acting white: a set of social interactions in which minority adolescents who get good grades in school enjoy less social popularity than white students who do well academically.




Speak Up For Fine Arts Education’s Future



I have been an outspoken advocate for elementary strings the past several years, because this course is a highly valued, high demand academic course that is part of the K-12 MMSD music curriculum but has been repeatedly put on the cut list without any meaningful curriculum planning taking place from year to year. However, I also strongly believe there has been a lack of long-term planning in all fine arts education since cuts began about 1999. Perhaps other academic areas have needed the administration’s attention, such as reading and math. That’s understandable, but the School Board missed yearly opportunities to put in place other structures to plan for the future of fine arts education in Madison – community committee is an example of one option they might have considered pursuing.
I was encouraged two weeks ago when the Performance and Achievement and Partnership Committee chairs indicated an interest in working on not only the cuts to elementary strings, but also other aspects of fine arts education. I hope a community-led fine arts education committee is formed from these two Board committees that will undertake long-term, strategic planning for fine arts education in Madison. I would like to see such planning include music, visual arts, dance, theater, etc. – all facets of the arts that bring joy and enrichment to the citizens in our community, growth to our city’s economy now and in the future and play an important academic role in the excellent education our children receive.
Again, School Board members can be emailed at: comments@madison.k12.wi.us




Local Property Tax Assessment Challenges Are Way Up This Year



Lee Sensenbrenner:

Prices seemed to be falling as he was buying, he said, and he paid less for his condominium than ones that were sold a month or two earlier. He paid $259,000, including a parking stall, and his fight against City Hall is to have it assessed at $221,000 rather than $241,000, plus $18,000 for the parking stall, which is now treated as a separate property.
He said others in the building have nicer views and are higher up, but have lower assessments for the same floor space. In particular, he points to Ald. Mike Verveer’s condo two floors above him, which faces the lake instead of the courtyard, and is assessed at $231,000. Like those of all units in the building, its assessed value did not increase from 2005 to 2006.
“Obviously,” Taylor wrote in a letter submitted to the Assessor’s Office, “my second-floor unit’s value should be far less than a fourth-floor unit with a lake view.”

A close look at assessments raises many more questions. Some municipalities, such as Fitchburg reassess properties every 3 to 5 (or longer) years rather than annually as Madison does. Learn more via Access Dane (I do find it odd that some publicly financed data requires a “subscription” – we have the opportunity to pay twice).
Sensenbrenner’s article provides more grist for the consideration of a fall referendum.




“I have private preference but a public purse”



Nefertiti Denise Jones:

My 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Virginia, now attends a private school that teaches foreign language and arts and offers after-school music and dance classes. But tuition is forcing me to look at Atlanta Public Schools next year for kindergarten.
When I first started researching where to send Elizabeth next year, I was looking for private schools that offered tuition assistance. I also sent an e-mail, however, to my Atlanta Board of Education representative asking him to sell me on taking my child out of private school and placing her into public school. His energetic reply made me look at Atlanta schools.

(more…)




Weekly Email Message



Carol Carstensen:

Parent Group Presidents:
MEMORIAL AND WEST AREA SCHOOLS: NOTE FORUM DESCRIBED UNDER MAY 8.
BUDGET FACTOID:
The 2006-07 proposed budget is on the district’s web site (www.mmsd.org/budget). The Executive Summary provides an overview of the budget. The list of specific staff cuts is found on pages 3 & 4 of Chapter 3, Department & Division Reports.
None of the cuts are good for the district or for the education of our children but they are required to keep the budget in compliance with the state revenue caps. Since there is likely to be considerable discussion about the cut affecting the elementary strings program, I wanted to provide a little additional information. The administration is proposing to continue the current structure (strings once a week for 45 minutes) for 5th graders only. Additionally, there is a recommendation to have a committee of district staff and UW music education specialists develop a new approach for K-5 music that will include, for all students, experience playing an instrument.
There are forums on the budget scheduled for Tuesday, May 2 at 6:30 p.m. at LaFollette and Tuesday, May 9 at 6:30 at Memorial.

(more…)




The Madison Community – Students, Parents, Professionals, Citizens – Can Help Elementary Strings: Here’s How



The community CAN HELP elementary strings and fine arts education in MMSD. Please write the School Board – comments@madison.k12.wi.us – ask them a) to establish a community fine arts education advisory committee beginning with a small community working group to put together a plan for this, b) develop a multi-year strategic and education plan for fine arts education, c) work with the music professionals and community to address short-term issues facing elementary music education (other fine arts areas – dance, drama) that supports children’s learning and academic achievement. Until this is done, please write the School Board asking them not to accept (to reject) the Superintendent’s current K-5 music education proposal to eliminate elementary strings.
At this late date in the year, I feel a small community working group needs to be established that will develop a plan for moving forward with the community on fine arts education issues. I would be more than happy to volunteer my time to help coordinate this effort, which I see as a first step toward the establishment of a community fine arts education task force/advisory committee. However, what is key is the School Board’s support and the Superintendent’s leadership, and I would be honored to work with all members of the school board and with the Superintendent. I’m sure other people would be happy to help as well.
The issues with MMSD’s fine arts elementary music education is not solely a budget issue, but the administration’s lack of imagination and longer-term education planning in fine arts makes courses such as strings become budget issues because nothing is done from year to year to make it anything other than a budget issue.
Elementary strings is a high-demand course – this isn’t 50 kids across the district, it was 1,745 in September 2005. From 1969 to 2005, enrollment has tripled, increasing by 1,000 students from 1992 until 2002, at the same time that the number of low income and minority children increased in the elementary student population. Demand for the course is annually 50% of the total enrollment in 4th and 5th grade. Plus, minority and low income enrollment has increased over the years. This year there are about 550 low income children enrolled in the elementary class. More low income children enrolled to take the course, but did not because of the pull out nature, I’m assuming. There is nowhere else in the City that so many low-income children have the opportunity to study an instrument at a higher level and continuously as part of their daily education.

(more…)




DC Public Schools & Charters



Kevin Carey:

Normally I leave charter school issues to my colleagues Eduwonk and Sara Mead. But this morning’s front page article in the WaPo struck me as too obvious to pass up. It details how DC Public Schools is considering a novel arrangement with KIPP, one of the city’s most successful charter schools. KIPP wants to start a new middle school, but is having a hard time finding space. Meanwhile, one the regular DCPS elementary schools is losing enrollment and thus has too much space, to the point that it’s in danger of being closed. Thus, the arrrangement: co-locate in the same building, don’t overlap grades, and coordinate curricula so students from the elementary school can stay in the building and go to the KIPP middle school if that’s what they want to do.

Sounds great, right? Not to DC school board vice president Carolyn Graham, who said:

“We want to fully embrace a working relationship with KIPP, but we don’t want to do it to the detriment of our student body and financial viability,” she said, adding that the system lost about $11 million in city funding this year after more than 3,000 students departed. “We want them to come up with a way of working with our charter school partners so that all our students would benefit.”

Hmmm. You know, that’s kind of wordy, let’s tighten that up a little:

“We want to fully embrace a working relationship with KIPP, but we don’t want to do it to the detriment of our student body and financial viability,” she said, adding that the system lost about $11 million in city funding this year after more than 3,000 students departed. “We want them to come up with a way of working with our charter school partners so that all our students I would benefit.”

There we go. Much more clear.

It’s true that more students in charter schools means less students in DCPS. But if you’re going to complain about that, you’ve got to at least make an attempt to say why that would be bad, particularly wih the test scores, parental demand, and the best judgment of the DCPS superintendant providing evidence to the country. The fact that Graham offers nothing of the kind is enormously telling




Children Before Special Interests



Matthew Ladner:

Oprah Winfrey recently used two days of her program to highlight the crisis in American public schools, focusing attention on our appalling dropout problem. The visuals were quite stunning.
In one segment, a group of inner-city Chicago students traded places with a group of suburban students to compare facilities and curriculums. In another, a valedictorian from a rural high school told of needing remedial classes in college. Perhaps most striking of all, CNN’s Andersen Cooper toured a high school near the White House that was in a shameful state of disrepair. Pieces of the ceiling had fallen on the ground, holes in the roof let rain pour into the school, restrooms were inoperable and unlit.
Oprah deserves a good deal of credit for putting a spotlight on these problems. Public schools face a dropout problem of stunning scale. Estimates from the Manhattan Institute put the nation’s dropout rate near 30 percent, with rates much higher among low-income and minority students. Many who do graduate do so without mastering high-school level material, as evidenced not only by the need for remediation among college students, but also in the stunningly poor literacy skills of the public.
National reading tests show that 38 percent of our fourth-graders score “below basic” in reading, meaning that they have failed to gain the basic literacy skills necessary to function academically. These students will drift into middle school, and literally be unable to make heads or tails of their textbooks.

via Andrew Rotherham:

Matthew Ladner, of steak dinner fame, weighs-in in the Philly Inquirer about what the Oprah hype all means. You can disagree with Ladner’s advocacy of vouchers but he nails the macro-problem here:




6% Success Rate: From High School to the Future: A first look at Chicago Public School graduates’ college enrollment, college preparation, and graduation from four-year colleges



Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago:

Following CPS (Chicago Public Schools) graduates from 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2003, this report uses records from Chicago high schools and data from the National Student Clearinghouse to examine the college experiences of all CPS alumni who entered college in the year after they graduated high school.
The study paints a discouraging picture of college success for CPS graduates. Despite the fact that nearly 80 percent of seniors state that they expect to graduate from a four-year college, only about 30 percent enroll in a four-year college within a year of graduating high school, and only 35 percent of those who enroll received a bachelor’s degree within six years. According to this report, CPS students’ low grades and test scores are keeping them from entering four-year colleges and more selective four-year colleges.

Complete study [14.9MB PDF]

(more…)




New York offers Housing Subsidy as a Teacher Lure



David Herszenhorn:

New York City will offer housing subsidies of up to $14,600 to entice new math, science and special education teachers to work in the city’s most challenging schools, in one of the most aggressive housing incentive programs in the nation to address a chronic shortage of qualified educators in these specialties.
To be eligible for the subsidies, teachers must have at least two years’ experience. City officials said they hoped the program, to be announced by the city Education Department today, would immediately lead to the hiring of an extra 100 teachers for September and, with other recruitment efforts, ultimately help fill as many as 600 positions now held by teachers without the proper credentials.




Teachers Unions as Agents of Reform



Sara Reed:

Voters in Denver, Colo., in 2005 overwhelmingly approved a $25 million tax increase to fund a new, nine-year performance-based pay system for the city’s teachers. Brad Jupp taught in Denver’s public schools for 20 years, and was the lead DCTA negotiator on the team that negotiated the pilot project in 1999, and for the next 5 years he worked on the team that implemented the ProComp pilot.
ES: Why were you able to develop a pay-for-performance model in Denver when other places haven’t been?
BJ: Denver had a combination of the right opportunities and people who were willing, once they saw the opportunities, to put aside their fears of losing and work with other people to try to take advantage of those opportunities. The people included a school board president willing to say, “If the teachers accept this, we’ll figure out how to pay for it. They included the teacher building reps who said, “This is too good to refuse outright; let’s study it.” They included a local foundation that, once we negotiated the pay for performance pilot, realized we might actually be serious and offered us a million dollars to help put it in place. They included the Community Training and Assistance Center, the group that provided us with technical support and a research study of our work. They were willing to take on the enormous and risky task of measuring the impact of the pilot. And they included 16 principals in Denver who were able to see that this was going to be an opportunity for their faculties to build esprit de corps, to make a little extra money, to do some professional development around measuring results. I don’t really think there was a secret ingredient other than people being able to move past their doubts and seize an opportunity. It was a chance to create opportunities where the rewards outweighed the risks. I don’t think we do that much in public education.
………
But public schools have a harder time making changes, especially in the way people are paid, for a number of reasons. First, we don’t have a history of measuring results, and we don’t have a results-oriented attitude in our industry. Furthermore, we have configured the debate about teacher pay so that it’s a conflict between heavyweight policy contenders like unions and school boards. Finally, we do not have direct control over our revenue. It is easier to change a pay system when there is a rapid change in revenue that can be oriented to new outcomes. Most school finance systems provide nothing but routine cost of living adjustments. If that is all a district and union have to work with, they’re not going to have money to redistribute and make a new pay system.

Fascinating interview.




The School Transformation Plan



A Strategy to Create Small, High-Performing College-Preparatory Schools in Every Neighborhood of Los Angeles
Green Dot Public Schools, Bain & Company [180K PDF]:

Public school reform has become the #1 issue for the City of Los Angeles. While most acknowledge the poor state of the public education system, the discussion to date has largely focused on governance issues, such as mayoral control and district break-up. This whitepaper is intended to refocus the debate on a future vision for public schools in Los Angeles about which all stakeholders will be enthusiastic. Simply put, every child in Los Angeles should have the opportunity to attend a small, safe, college-preparatory public school. This whitepaper also provides a strategy for how the City of Los Angeles can take advantage of its historic opportunity to make this vision a reality. With $19 billion in bond funding, the Los Angeles Unified School District has unparalleled resources to execute a dramatic transformation.

via Eduwonk.

(more…)




States Help Schools Hide Minority Scores



Frank Bass, Nicole Ziegler Dizon and Ben Feller:

States are helping public schools escape potential penalties by skirting the No Child Left Behind law’s requirement that students of all races must show annual academic progress.
With the federal government’s permission, schools aren’t counting the test scores of nearly 2 million students when they report progress by racial groups, an Associated Press computer analysis found.
Minorities – who historically haven’t fared as well as whites in testing – make up the vast majority of students whose scores are being excluded, AP found. And the numbers have been rising.
“I can’t believe that my child is going through testing just like the person sitting next to him or her and she’s not being counted,” said Angela Smith, a single mother. Her daughter, Shunta’ Winston, was among two dozen black students whose test scores weren’t broken out by race at her suburban Kansas City, Mo., high school.
To calculate a nationwide estimate, AP analyzed the 2003-04 enrollment figures the government collected – the latest on record – and applied the current racial category exemptions the states use.
Overall, AP found that about 1.9 million students – or about 1 in every 14 test scores – aren’t being counted under the law’s racial categories. Minorities are seven times as likely to have their scores excluded as whites, the analysis showed.
Less than 2 percent of white children’s scores aren’t being counted as a separate category. In contrast, Hispanics and blacks have roughly 10 percent of their scores excluded. More than one-third of Asian scores and nearly half of American Indian scores aren’t broken out, AP found.

Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights website.
Carrie Antifinger notes that the loophole snares 33% of Wisconsin minority students.
Andrew Rotherham:

First, a reader of some of the back and forth might end up thinking that the law requires some minimum subgroup or that the feds set the subgroup size. It doesn’t, they don’t. Here are the exact AYP regulations from the Federal Register (pdf) and here is Ed Trust’s explanatory piece. It’s left up to the states although the feds approve the state plans and consequently have approved the various sizes in effect now. Now they’re trying to figure out how to clean up (pdf) some of the mess they’ve created.




Promises Betrayed



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

(more…)




Madison Schools, New Population, New Challenges



Sandy Cullen:

Twenty-five years ago, less than 10 percent of the district’s students were minorities and relatively few lived in poverty. Today, there are almost as many minority students as white, and nearly 40 percent of all students are considered poor – many of them minority students. And the number of students who aren’t native English speakers has more than quadrupled.
“The school district looks a lot different from 1986 when I graduated,” said Madison School Board member Johnny Winston Jr.
The implications of this shift for the district and the city of Madison are huge, city and school officials say. Academic achievement levels of minority and low-income students continue to lag behind those of their peers. Dropout, suspension and expulsion rates also are higher for minority students.
“Generally speaking, children who grow up in poverty do not come to school with the same skills and background” that enable their wealthier peers to be successful, Superintendent Art Rainwater said. “I think there are certainly societal issues that are race-related that also affect the school environment.”
While the demographics of the district’s students have changed dramatically, the makeup of the district as a whole doesn’t match.
The overall population within the school district, which includes most of Madison along with parts of some surrounding municipalities, is predominantly white and far less likely to be poor. And most taxpayers in the district do not have school-age children, statistics show, a factor some suggest makes it harder to pass referendums to increase taxes when schools are seeking more money.
Forty-four percent of Madison public school students are minorities, while more than 80 percent of residents in the city are white, according to U.S. Census figures for 2000, the most recent year available. And since 1991, the percentage of district students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches has nearly doubled to 39 percent; in 2000, only 15 percent of Madison’s residents were below the poverty level.
Although the city’s minority and low-income population has increased since the 2000 census, it’s “nowhere near what it is in the schools,” said Dan Veroff, director of the Applied Population Laboratory in UW- Madison’s department of rural sociology.

Barb Schrank asked “Where have all the Students Gone? in November, 2005:

There’s a lot more at work in the MMSD’s flat or slightly declining enrollment than Cullen’s article discusses. These issues include:

Thoreau’s most recent PTO meeting, which included 50 parent and teacher participants, illustrates a few of the issues that I believe are driving some families to leave: growing math curriculum concerns and the recent imposition of mandatory playground grouping without any prior parent/PTO discussion.
Student losses, or the MMSD’s failure to capture local population growth directly affects the district’s ability to grow revenue (based on per student spending and annual budget increases under the state’s revenue caps).
The MMSD’s failure to address curriculum and govenance concerns will simply increase the brain flight and reduces the number of people supporting the necessary referendums. Jason Shepherd’s recent article is well worth reading for additional background.
Finally, Mary Kay Battaglia put together some of these numbers in December with her “This is not Your Grandchild’s Madison School District“.




“Keep Option To Recount Ballots By Hand”



Paul Malischke:

Because of Madison’s close School Board election, you may be witnessing the last manual recount of election results in Wisconsin for some time to come. A bill in the Legislature, poised to become law, will outlaw manual recounts for municipalities that use machine-readable ballots.
Under current law, the board of canvassers may use automatic voting machines for recounts, but the board may also perform a manual count of the ballots.
Senate Bill 612 would change that. Buried on page 18 of this 120-page bill is a requirement that all recounts be done by machine for machine-readable ballots, unless a petition for a manual recount is approved by a circuit court. The bill passed the Senate unanimously and is under consideration by a committee in the Assembly.
This bill should be changed. We need to preserve the ability to conduct a manual recount.
In September 2005, the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office summarized the flaws in the computerized voting machines now being sold. The conclusion of the GAO was that “key activities need to be completed” before we have secure and reliable electronic voting systems.
In the Madison School Board race there was a large number of undervotes (ballots that were not counted by the machine). Seven wards had an undervote of more than 20, and three more were more than 10 percent.

I observed the recount of Ward 52 this week. Interestingly, hand recounts (by two different people) confirmed Maya’s 231 votes while the same people counted Arlene’s votes and ended up with 300, twice. The machine, however, counted 301 on election night and during the recount. I agree with Malischke.
Greg Borowski and Tom Kertscher looked at another unusual election issue (from the November, 2004 election) last spring, voting gaps:

“In Madison, the city counts of the number of ballots cast, but doesn’t routinely try to reconcile that figure with the number of people recorded as having voted in an election. The firm found in Madison 133,598 people were recorded as having voted but 138,204 ballots were cast, a difference of more than 4,600. The actual number of ballots cast overall was 138,452, but the city doesn’t have a figure for the number of people recorded as having voted, Deputy City Clerk Sharon Christensen said.”

(more…)




Reorganizing the Reorganization



Diane Ravitch:

But what is obvious is that once again a major decision—one might even say a revolutionary decision—affecting the most important public institution in the city and the lives of 1.1 students has been taken without any public consultation. Once again, the leaders at Tweed met behind closed doors with their management consultants and their experts in corporate governance, along with chosen staff members, and reached decisions that will have sweeping implications for the public school system.
Something is terribly wrong with this scenario. Public agencies in a democracy are not free to make major policy changes without public consultation, public feedback, public review, and other efforts to forge a consensus. That is the way democratic governance is supposed to work. What we have now seems to be the behavior and actions of a monarchy or a privately held corporation that has no stockholders; its leaders can do whatever they wish without seeking public input or public assent.




Program on Vouchers Draws Minority Support



Diana Jean Schemo:

Washington’s African-American mayor, Anthony A. Williams, joined Republicans in supporting the program, prompted in part by a concession from Congress that pumped more money into public and charter schools. In doing so, Mr. Williams ignored the ire of fellow Democrats, labor unions and advocates of public schools.
“As mayor, if I can’t get the city together, people move out,” said Mr. Williams, who attended Catholic schools as a child. “If I can’t get the schools together, why should there be a barrier programmatically to people exercising their choice and moving their children out?”
School-choice programs have fervent opponents, and here, public school officials worry that the voucher program will diminish the importance of the neighborhood school, though the program serves only a relative few of the district’s 58,000 students. National critics of school choice like Reg Weaver, president of the country’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, accused voucher supporters of “exploiting the frustration of these minority parents to push for a political agenda” intended to undermine public schools.




VOTE



Arguably every school board election is important, but this one is critical—this is a race for control of the majority. Maya Cole and Lucy Mathiak, two admirable, excellent candidates on their own, if elected today will shift the majority, in combination with Ruth Robarts and Lawrie Kobza. The result will be a new day in district politics. This new era will be marked by civility, public accessibility, accountability and cooperation, a far cry from the way the current board majority has run things. But BOTH Lucy and Maya must be elected for this to happen.
Arlene Silveira, Maya Cole’s worthy opponent, is firmly in the Carstensen, Keys, Lopez, Vang and Winston camp. Arlene has their support along with the endorsement of MTI. I have been impressed with her easy, professional manner. However, I disagree strongly not only with her blanket commitment to heterogeneity but also as to what her election would represent–business as usual,
If nothing else, this race has shaken up Madison politics. So-called progressives smear a graduate of Camp Wellstone/social justice activist as conservative. The liberal newspaper endorses what would in any other year have been described as the “pro-business” candidate while the conservative paper endorses her opponent, the stay-at-home mom. Local “progressives” spread rumors about PAC money from conservatives despite the strenous protests of an incredibly independent candidate who has always disavowed PAC money.
The only way I can really make sense out of it is that it’s outcome-based –do you want the board to continue on the current path, or is it time for a change? Thus, the CapTimes can endorse Mathiak and Silveira because this will keep the status quo in charge. The WSJ wants to see a change so endorses Cole and Mathiak.
Today is a perfect early spring day in our fair city. My neighborhood will echo with the happy shouts and laughter from the Randall playground when I leave the house this morning. Please take the time to stop by your ward and vote. This is for them.
One last thought: thank you to the candidates and all the members of the school board. While I may disagree profoundly with some of you, I have the greatest respect for your commitment to our schools and dedication to public service.




Channel 3000 on the school board election



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




The fate of the schools



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

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

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

(more…)




“Regional Tax Base Sharing”



Madison Alder Zach Brandon:

Joint Economic Development Zones
A “Capital Corridor” municipal tax base sharing model
It is imperative that the City of Madison, and the surrounding municipalities, seek out new opportunities to expand and diversify the region’s economic base. Utilizing forward-thinking business development strategies to create jobs is essential in meeting that goal. The City of Madison should be proactive in facilitating regional economic development through innovative cooperative agreements with neighboring municipalities and through the development of regional strategies for growth.

via the daily page.




Candidates agree education is at crossroads



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

(more…)




In Defense of Big Schools



Gotham Gazette’s Reading NYC Book Club met with author Samuel Freedman, New York Times education columnist, and Jessica Siegel, the teacher who is one of the subjects of “Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School.”An edited transcript is below:

The problem is that you have this tail of this big grant from the Gates Foundation wagging this policy dog at the Department of Ed. Because Gates has a big priority to start small schools, the Department of Education is jumpstarting 50 a year, year after year. It’s just impossible to have quality opening up schools in that kind of frenetic way. It also means a lot of these schools get opened up with these ultra-niche academic orientations – sports careers or architecture – that I think are really preposterous for a ninth grader. I think what they tend to do is serve the interests of community organizations that are sponsors. These may be perfectly well-intended sponsoring groups, but that doesn’t mean that the high school as a whole is going to work with a curriculum that is defined that narrowly, especially when there is a good reason to put more emphasis on language, science, math and a lot of the core subjects.


Joanne Jacobs has more, including this”

Gotham Gazette: Jonathan Kozol recently wrote an article for Gotham Gazette Segregated Schools: Shame Of The City, in which he argued that one issue that is being ignored is racial segregation. He said that until that is confronted, other reforms will not accomplish much. What is your perspective on that?
Jessica Siegel: What is the percentage of the public schools students that are children or color? Eighty-five percent? It’s not even relevant. That’s who is in the public schools. To me it’s not an issue of segregation so much as what kind of education you are going to give to the kids there.
Samuel Freedman: I completely agree with Jessica. Kozol espouses a point of view you pick up in education schools. But it is a high-minded excuse for paralysis.
. . . It’s part of educational suicide to say now, however well intentioned you are, that until you solve poverty or segregation nothing can happen in the schools. Something has to be able to happen in the schools.




Some schools, including Sherman, will get fresh fruit & vegetables



State Superintendent of Public Instruction Elizabeth Burmaster issued the following press release:

Students will crunch on carrots or cauliflower, or whip up a fruit smoothie while learning the importance of eating fresh produce in 25 schools throughout the state, thanks to a federal grant that brings Wisconsin into the successful U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program.
“This grant allows us to offer more fresh produce to all students as a supplement to the school breakfast and school lunch programs,” said State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster. “Many schools will offer the fresh fruits and vegetables at times during the day when children would otherwise be hungry, or might need an energy boost to improve their attention in the classroom. We know that hungry children can’t learn, so this program supports our efforts to boost achievement for all students and close the achievement gap.”

(more…)




O’Keefe Student Wins Badger Spelling Bee



Barry Adams:

When Isabel Jacobson exited last year’s state spelling bee in the fourth round, the tearful O’Keeffe Middle School student predicted she would be back for another shot at the title.
Her prophecy was right on – and then some.
The three-time Madison All-City Spelling Bee champ outdueled the La Crosse area’s three-time winner, Spring Raine Decker, in a six-minute, four-word showdown to win the 58th annual Badger Spelling Bee.
Isabel, 13, correctly spelled “picaresque” to win an all-expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C., to represent Wisconsin in the Scripps National Spelling Bee on May 31 and June 1.
“It feels really good,” said Isabel, who leaped from the Monona Grove High School stage to get hugs from her family when she won. “I think one of my mistakes last year was that I really geared up for the city bee and didn’t study enough for state.”




Kansas Study on School Performance & Spending



Jim Sullinger:

The way Kansas schools spend their public money may be just as important as how much they get, according to a study released Thursday.
Initiated last year by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, the study by the Standard & Poor’s School Evaluation Services is thought to be the first to analyze and compare student performance and the way schools allocate budget dollars. It was funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
The study identified 17 districts that were using their dollars most effectively in achieving high levels of student performance on assessment tests.
The surprise for lawmakers was how much these 17 spent compared with less-successful districts.
“They spent less than the state average and less than districts that didn’t perform as well,” said Jason Kingston, chief analyst on the Standard & Poor’s project.
Based on the analysis, the study concluded that it would be too costly for the state to spend its way to proficiency.

The complete report can be found here [240K PDF file]. A summary is available here.




Kalamazoo, Mich., Pegs Revitalization Plan on Tuition Plan



Neal E. Boudette:

Last year, Greg DeHaan and his partner built 189 homes in the leafy, middle-class suburbs ringing this downtrodden industrial city, but not one in Kalamazoo itself. “There was no demand,” says Mr. DeHaan, whose company, Allen Edwin Homes, is one of the largest home builders in Michigan.
By early December, however, a market had suddenly materialized, prompting the developer to pay $7 million for three separate tracts of land. Out-of-state investors began scouring the area for opportunities, too.
Mr. DeHaan and others in town trace this new interest in Kalamazoo to an unusual, anonymously funded plan. Beginning this June, college tuition will be free for any student who enters the Kalamazoo school system by the ninth grade — regardless of income or need. The program, unveiled in November by the city’s superintendent of schools and underwritten by a group of local philanthropists, is to run for at least 13 years.
Called the “Kalamazoo Promise,” the tuition plan requires only that students live in Kalamazoo or neighboring Oshtemo township, graduate from public high school and attend a public university or community college in Michigan. Students who go from kindergarten through the 12th grade get a full ride. The program will cover 65% of tuition costs for those who spend at least their four high-school years in the city’s schools, with the percentage of aid rising for those who spend more years in the system.

Interesting relationship between education, economic development and a community.




Standards, Accountability, and School Reform



This is very long, and the link may require a password so I’ve posted the entire article on the continued page.
TJM
http://www.tcrecord.org/PrintContent.asp?ContentID=11566
Standards, Accountability, and School Reform
by Linda Darling-Hammond — 2004
The standards-based reform movement has led to increased emphasis on tests, coupled with rewards and sanctions, as the basis for “accountability” systems. These strategies have often had unintended consequences that undermine access to education for low-achieving students rather than enhancing it. This article argues that testing is information for an accountability system; it is not the system itself. More successful outcomes have been secured in states and districts, described here, that have focused on broader notions of accountability, including investments in teacher knowledge and skill, organization of schools to support teacher and student learning, and systems of assessment that drive curriculum reform and teaching improvements.

(more…)




Madison Seeks Room to Grow



Dean Mosiman:

After decades of gobbling land like a ravenous Pac-Man, Madison is facing the reality of running out of real estate.
To share the region’s new jobs, housing and businesses, the city must push outward, which brings tension and conflict with neighbors.
Now, the city is negotiating with those neighbors on its final borders, which will decide who controls rules for private, undeveloped lands and who reaps tax money to pay for police, garbage collection, plowing streets and other services.
It will also dictate how and where growth happens.






From the Wall Street Journal‘s Opinion Journal
CROSS COUNTRY
Black Flight
The exodus to charter schools.
BY KATHERINE KERSTEN
MINNEAPOLIS–Something momentous is happening here in the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools.
Today, just around half of students who live in the city attend its district public schools. As a result, Minneapolis schools are losing both raw numbers of students and “market share.” In 1999-2000, district enrollment was about 48,000; this year, it’s about 38,600. Enrollment projections predict only 33,400 in 2008. A decline in the number of families moving into the district accounts for part of the loss, as does the relocation of some minority families to inner-ring suburbs. Nevertheless, enrollments are relatively stable in the leafy, well-to-do enclave of southwest Minneapolis and the city’s white ethnic northeast. But in 2003-04, black enrollment was down 7.8%, or 1,565 students. In 2004-05, black enrollment dropped another 6%.

(more…)




Senators Pass Bill Regulating Indoor Air Quality In Schools



Channel3000:

he Wisconsin Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that would monitor indoor air quality at schools around the state.
The measure, Senate bill 235, was championed by Jeanne and Dick Black, of Darlington, after their 9-year-old daughter Jade became ill from what they said that poor air quality at her school.
They said that Jade was diagnosed with severe mold-induced asthma and suffered headaches, migraines, blurred vision, rashes on her face, stomach aches and nausea while attending Darlington Elementary and Middle School. The symptoms subsided when she transferred to another school under doctor’s orders.
According to the Wisconsin Education Association Council, 80 schools in the state have air quality problems. They include Chavez and Midvale Elementary in Madison, Edgerton High School, Marshall Elementary School, Webb Middle School in Reedsburg, and Black Earth Elementary in the Wisconsin Heights District. Other districts cited without a specific school listed include Adams-Friendship, Boscobel, Columbus, Cuba City, Monticello, Palmyra-Eagle, Poynette, Rio and Wisconsin Dells, WISC-TV reported.




Cole: New schools should be green



Maya Cole posted an interesting idea on her Web site:

Energy efficiency stands out as one island of excellence in the MMSD. The Wisconsin Focus on Energy program features the Madison school district in one of its case studies on energy-efficient schools.
I’d like to take the MMSD’s excellent energy-efficiency commitment one step further by directing the district to construct any new school or other building with environmentally sensitive practices, including natural lighting, energy efficiency, water conservation, recycled products, and other green building practices.

(more…)




Math Forum Audio / Video and Links



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

The conversation, including audience questions was lively.

(more…)




Carol Carstensen on “No New Ideas”



Carol Carstensen:

A letter to the editor

Dear Editor: As soon as I saw my words quoted in boldface in the Feb. 21 Capital Times article about the school budget, I knew that someone would make the comments in the following day's Sound Off about the need for new School Board members.

I think new ideas and fresh perspectives are invaluable. However, there are a few qualifications: The ideas must not violate any laws or contractual agreements, they should actually save money, and they must be ones we can implement.

I can come up with a new idea of how to save money on transportation: outfit the buses with pedals for every seat and have the students provide some of the energy needed to move the bus, both reducing use of gasoline and providing kids with exercise. However, the plan is not very feasible, at least in the short term. I can also buy lottery tickets, but that approach is not very reliable.

A few additional facts:

The school district has been under revenue caps, and reducing expenditures, for the last 13 years.

• The city and county were faced with significant problems as they kept their budget increases to around 4 percent.

• The school district's budget increase was 2.5 percent (and the school district's tax levy actually decreased by $2 million).

One final qualification: Claiming the problem doesn't exist isn't a new idea.

Carol Carstensen
president
Madison School Board



Published: February 24, 2006




What’s not to like about funding new community programs?



On March 6, the Madison Board of Education will vote on Johnny Winston Jr.’s proposal for the district to spend approximately $200,000 this year on four community programs. Great Opportunity Needs Your Support
Sounds good. These are all good programs run by good people with good ideas and goals.
The question before the board, however, is not whether we like the programs or think that they would use our funds for good purposes. The question is whether the district should commit these dollars from this budget to these community programs at this time.
I think that the answer is no.
Fiscal policy problem: “These dollars” are the dollars remaining in the Reserve for Contingencies in our budget for “community programs and services” budget, aka Fund 80. Three months remain in our fiscal year. It is good fiscal policy to have money in reserve for emergencies. If an organization must spend its reserve, it is good fiscal policy to use the funds for one-time costs, rather than to create new programs that will need funds again the next year. It is bad fiscal policy to spend all of the Reserve for Contingencies on new programs. We will have no capacity to deal with emergencies in the remainder of the fiscal year if we make this commitment. The same programs will add $208,000 to next year’s budget for Fund 80 (the basic allotment to each program plus 4.1% for increases in their costs).

(more…)




How Safe is Your High School? Madison West



Channel3000:

The police data on the school shows a mixed record. In the past three and a half years, Madison West ranks first among the other city schools in bomb threats, property damage and fights.
However, it also has the fewest number of drug incidents and weapons violations.
Overall, West High School has the lowest crime rate.
School principal Ed Holmes, who is in his second year, said that he wants it even lower.
He said that it’s one reason that he’s completely reshaped the school day with a revolutionary overhaul of the lunch schedule.




Safety in Madison High Schools – Memorial



Channel3000:

News 3 examined the data from Madison Memorial High School on Wednesday night. The school outpaces the three other city schools combined.
So far this year, Memorial has 68 arrests while West High School has 11, East High School has 18, and Robert M. LaFolette has 15.
At the current rate, Memorial would end the school year with an 88 percent increase in crime. West would be up 29 percent, but East and LaFollette would each see a 54 percent decrease
Memorial is a school at a real crossroads, and one frequently in the news because of reports of violence.
Video

WKOW-TV notes a recent pellet gun shooting at the school.
UPDATE: Lisa Schuetz reports that a 17 year old girl was charged in this shooting.




Great Opportunity Needs Your Support



We have a great opportunity! On Monday March 6th, the Madison School Board will be considering four proposals for funding that have an opportunity to have a positive impact on the student achievement in our school district. These programs are community based after school and summer programming that can supplement students’ academic achievement in the Madison Metropolitan School District. These programs are not subject to the state imposed revenue limits. They are Kajsiab House and Freedom Inc., Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network-South Central Wisconsin (GLSEN), Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth (WCATY) , and The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute, Inc. (CHHI) . I am asking for your support to help fund these programs.

(more…)




Full Funding Of Schools An Empty Promise



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




A Formula for Failure in L.A. Schools



This is from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times. I was alerted to it by the Daily Howler blog http://www.dailyhowler.com/. I mention this because that site has had some great education coverage lately and will soon be launching an all-education companion blog.
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-dropout30jan30,0,3211437.story?coll=la-news-learning
THE VANISHING CLASS
A Formula for Failure in L.A. Schools
Because they can’t pass algebra, thousands of students are denied diplomas. Many try again and again — but still get Fs.
By Duke Helfand
Times Staff Writer
January 30, 2006
Each morning, when Gabriela Ocampo looked up at the chalkboard in her ninth-grade algebra class, her spirits sank.
There she saw a mysterious language of polynomials and slope intercepts that looked about as familiar as hieroglyphics.
She knew she would face another day of confusion, another day of pretending to follow along. She could hardly do long division, let alone solve for x.
“I felt like, ‘Oh, my God, what am I going to do?’ ” she recalled.
Gabriela failed that first semester of freshman algebra. She failed again and again — six times in six semesters. And because students in Los Angeles Unified schools must pass algebra to graduate, her hopes for a diploma grew dimmer with each F.
Midway through 12th grade, Gabriela gathered her textbooks, dropped them at the campus book room and, without telling a soul, vanished from Birmingham High School.
Her story might be just a footnote to the Class of 2005 except that hundreds of her classmates, along with thousands of others across the district, also failed algebra.
Of all the obstacles to graduation, algebra was the most daunting.
The course that traditionally distinguished the college-bound from others has denied vast numbers of students a high school diploma.
“It triggers dropouts more than any single subject,” said Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer. “I think it is a cumulative failure of our ability to teach math adequately in the public school system.”

(more…)




School board candidates Silveira and Cole face off in April



By Susan Troller
Although Madison School Board candidate Arlene Silveira’s 48 percent showing in Tuesday’s primary has established her as the front runner in the race for a Madison School Board seat, an opponent’s supporter says a primary win does not assure a general election victory, especially when the turnout is very low.
School Board member Ruth Robarts is a supporter of Maya Cole, who trailed Silveira in Tuesday’s primary with 35 percent of the vote. Robarts noted when she ran for the School Board in 1997, she finished a distant second in the primary with just 22 percent of the vote. Robarts picked up about 11,000 votes following the primary and won the general election.
“What was established (in Tuesday’s primary) is that there are now two viable candidates, each with an opportunity to pick up a significant number of votes in the general election,” Robarts said.
Silveira and Cole both have strong credentials as volunteers in the community. They held off 27-year-old doctoral student Michael J. Kelly to advance to the general election to compete for the School Board seat being vacated by incumbent Bill Keys. Under 5 percent of the district’s voters turned out for Tuesday’s election.
“Given that this was the only race, I thought the turnout was actually fairly good,” said Silveira. “And I was very happy for support across the whole district. I heard, again and again, that the needs of children are the issue.”
Silveira, who is single and has a middle school age daughter, has been an active school volunteer for nine years. A member of the West/Memorial area boundary task force, she supports that group’s recommendation to build an addition at Leopold Elementary and a new far west side elementary school to address issues of overcrowding and growth. Silveira is a marketing director for Promega Corporation.
Cole is a stay-at-home mother of three elementary school age boys, and has been an activist in opposition to concealed carry legislation.
“Obviously, I hope that there’s a bigger turnout in the general election,” Cole said today. “I’m looking forward to working really hard over the next 40 days and to getting people fired up about this School Board race.”
The former editor of a medical journal, Cole is the community/communication chair of the Franklin/Randall PTO. She takes a cautious approach toward building, and has called for what she calls a more transparent budget.
Kelly, who moved to Madison from Boston last summer and is pursuing his doctorate in medieval history at the University of Wisconsin, was a surprise late entrant into the race, which prompted the citywide primary. Given his low-key campaign, which included just a handful of appearances at forums and candidate debates, he said he was happy with his showing. And he clearly liked the process, saying he intends to continue to be involved in Madison politics.
“I have learned a lot from this campaign and look forward to taking that knowledge and experience, along with my active and progressive vision for Madison and my strong voter base, with me into future campaigns,” he said.
SCHOOL BOARD RESULTS
• Arlene Silveira: 3,191
• Maya Cole: 2,338
• Michael J. Kelly: 996
E-mail: stroller@madison.com
Published: February 22, 2006




Alliances Are Unconventional In School Board Primary Race




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

(more…)




AFRICAN-AMERICAN BOYS: THE CRIES OF A CRISIS By E. BERNARD FRANKLIN



This message was sent to me by Mazie Jenkins an MMSD employee. This trend needs to STOP. I’m committed to changing this. I need your support on Monday nights and every single day!!!
If there is not major intervention in the next 25 years, 75 percent
of urban young men will either be hopelessly hooked on drugs or
alcohol, in prison or dead.
The data are clear. Reports by the American Council on Education, the
Education Trust and the Schott Foundation show that African-American
boys spend more time in special education, spend less time in advanced
placement or college prep courses and receive more disciplinary
suspensions and expulsions than any other group in U.S. schools today.

(more…)




Notes from Monday’s Madison School Board Meeting



Two interesting notes, among many, I’m sure from Monday evening’s Madison School Board meeting:

  • Johnny Winston, Jr. introduced a motion for the Administration to look at acquiring land in Fitchburg for a new school. This motion passed 5-1, with Bill Keys voting no (and Juan Jose Lopez absent).
  • Ruth Robarts advocated curriculum changes as a means to attract more families to certain schools. She mentioned the use of Singapore Math (Note that some Madison residents are paying a chunk of money to send their children to Madison Country Day School, which uses Singapore Math).

Speaking of Math, Rafael Gomez is organizing a middle school math forum on February 22, 2006, from 7 to 8:00p.m.
Local news commentary:

  • Channel3000:

    The Madison Metropolitan School Board met for hours Monday discussing overcrowding options for the looming referendum

  • WKOW-TV:

    After nearly five hours of discussion, the Madison School Board decided to put off asking tax payers for a new school in April and says voters may have to head to the polls this fall instead.

  • Susan Troller:

    That potential option was added to the mix regarding how the Madison School District could deal with growth and overcrowding on the west side following a special School Board meeting Monday night.
    Board Vice President Johnny Winston, Jr. led a motion to ask district administrators to explore land sites and options for a possible new school in the rapidly developing areas south of the Beltline in Fitchburg, including land currently in the Verona and Oregon school districts.
    Board member Lawrie Kobza supported Winston’s motion and said she may be willing to support a new elementary school in the south Fitchburg area as part of a long-range plan for the district. Kobza does not support an addition at Leopold, saying the school already has more than 650 students, which the district has deemed its maximum acceptable capacity.

  • Sandy Cullen:

    The Madison School Board voted Monday to direct district administrators to investigate purchasing land for a future school in south Fitchburg as a long-term solution to crowding at Leopold Elementary School, while board members continue to explore a more immediate solution to the problem.




Another Referendum?



WKOW-TV:

The Madison Metropolitan School District is hoping to address issues of overcrowding and future growth. One school board memember says Monday the board will decide whether to once again bring their concerns to the public in a referendum. The issues on that potential refereundum could include a new elementary school on the Linden Park site, operating costs for the school, and an addition a the Leopold Elementary site.
Board member Ruth Robarts believes if the board moves forward with the current plan, voters will likely vote down the referendum.
“All parents want to know which schools are going to be where two, three, five years from now. That involves more than just getting the report from our task forces back and then suddenly going to referendum,” she says.
Decisions of this type usually come in two steps…first the vote of whether to hold a referendum, and then how it will be worded. But Robarts says the board has a deadline of February 17th to notify the city, and the public of their desire for a referedum.




Nineteen Finance and Taxation Questions for Elected Officials



Paul Soglin:

These questions were developed in Wisconsin but are universal. Here are nineteen questions that an elected official (School Board, City Council/Town or Village Board, County Board, State Legislature) should be able to address after two budgets, or two years in office, whichever comes first.
Note: Some of the questions are premised upon faulty or erroneous assumptions, or the political view of the questioner. Other questions have no ‘correct’ answer but the answer should reflect the respondents’ views on levels of taxation and redistribution of resources through taxation.

Soglin has also begun an essay on Kids, Schools and Cities.




Tutor Program Going Unused



Susan Saulny:

The No Child Left Behind law requires consistently failing schools that serve mostly poor children to offer their students a choice if they want it: a new school or tutoring from private companies or other groups, paid for with federal money — typically more than $1,800 a child in big cities. In the past the schools would have been under no obligation to use that Title I federal poverty grant to pay for outside tutoring.
City and state education officials and tutoring company executives disagree on the reasons for the low participation and cast blame on each other. But they agree that the numbers show that states and school districts have not smoothed out the difficulties that have plagued the tutoring — known as the supplemental educational services program — from its start as a novel experiment in educational entrepreneurship: largely private tutoring paid for with federal money.
Officials give multiple reasons for the problems: that the program is allotted too little federal money, is poorly advertised to parents, has too much complicated paperwork for signing up, and that it has not fully penetrated the most difficult neighborhoods, where there are high concentrations of poor, failing students.




MMSD: Searching for alternative revenue streams



As a member of the Madison School Board and chair of the Finance and Operations Committee, I would like to get your ideas and perspectives regarding “alternative revenue streams” for the MMSD. The parameters would be: not to target students, No alcohol & drugs (e.g. bars), promotion of good health (e.g. no soft drinks), nothing morally questionable (use your imagination). Here are some areas identified:

(more…)




Teach, the Film



Davis Guggenheim’s new film (CC licensed):

As our politicians and the press argue the merits of countless school reforms, it is our teachers who enter the classroom every day and fight the real fight: educating our children, one child at a time. The First Year shows the human side of this story: the determination and commitment of five novice teachers as they struggle to survive their first year in America’s toughest schools.
George teaches recent immigrants learning English as a second language. After the school board plans to cut funding for her high school class, she rallies her students to fight city hall and wins.
Geneviève “wanted to teach the kids no one else wanted to teach.” She spends hours of extra time reaching out to a middle-school student only to lose him in the end.




School board divided again over plans to reduce overcrowding



Kurt Gutknecht, writing in the Fitchburg Star about the recent Board and public discussion of the East / West Task Forces:

There was a sense of déjà vu when the Madison Metropolitan School Board met Jan. 30 when the schism that fractured it last year – and which appeared to be a key factor in the defeat of a referendum last spring – surfaced again. Four members of the board appear solidly in support of another referendum and two members appear steadfast in their opposition, although the board hasn’t officially acted on the matter.
The possibility of a divided board has already alarmed supporters of a new addition to Leopold Elementary School, who think it will provide additional ammunition to critics.
The discussion was often heated as Ruth Robarts and Lawrie Kobza charged that the board was rushing to a referendum without an adequate long-range plan.
Their stance irritated Juan Jose Lopez, who accused them of “playing politics” with the future of schoolchildren simply because they didn’t like the outcome. “I for one will not sit here and allow you to do that,” he said.
A key disagreement involved the weight accorded the recommendations of the task forces charged with formulating long-range options.

(more…)




Thinking Different: D.C. Proposes Deals with Developers for Schools and Libraries



Debbie Wilgoren:

The old schools and libraries need to be replaced. Developers are hungry for space for even more condominiums. So D.C. officials want to make a deal: The developers would build new libraries, schools and maybe even police stations, and get the privilege of putting condominiums or shops on top of or alongside them.
Proponents say developers could pay now for amenities the city wouldn’t fund for years, if ever, and developers would get scarce city space for housing — mostly high-end, but some affordable.
With the costs of fixing schools and libraries estimated at close to $2 billion, said D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp, “I don’t believe we can tax our way out.”

I think we’ll see much more of this.




Sun Prairie Finalizes Three High School Referenda Questions



Gena Kittner:

The first question would be if the district should build one high school, which could be expanded, for 1,400 students on the city’s east side, said board President Mary Ellen Havel- Lang.
The other two possible questions would be if the district should build a bigger gym than what’s proposed in the new high school and if the auditorium should be built so that it could be turned into a performing arts center, she said.

Sun Priarie School District site.




And, For Perfect Attendance, Johnny Gets a Car



Pam Belluck:

Attendance at Chelsea High School had hovered at a disappointing 90 percent for years, and school officials were determined to turn things around. So, last fall they decided to give students in this poverty-stung city just north of Boston a little extra motivation: students would get $25 for every quarter they had perfect attendance and another $25 if they managed perfect attendance all year.
“I was at first taken a little aback by the idea: we’re going to pay kids to come to school?” said the principal, Morton Orlov II. “But then I thought perfect attendance is not such a bad behavior to reward. We are sort of putting our money where our mouth is.”




East / West Task Force Report: Board Discussion and Public Comments



Video | MP3 Audio

 Monday evening’s Board meeting presented a rather animated clash of wills between, it appears, those (A majority of the Board, based on the meeting discussions) who support Fitchburg’s Swan Creek residents and their desire to remain at a larger Leopold School vs. those who favor using existing District schools that have extra space for the 63 Fitchburg children (no other students would move under the plan discussed Monday evening), such as Lincoln and/or the Lincoln/Midvale pair.

(more…)




School Board split on referendum: must vote by Feb. 17



By Susan Troller, The Capital Times, January 31, 2006
Madison voters may be looking at another referendum on school building this spring to address overcrowding issues, but the School Board appears split in its support of taking the issue to the voters.
School Board President Carol Carstensen has recommended that the administration prepare language that would ask voters to approve spending for a new $17 million elementary school on the city’s far west side and an addition to Leopold Elementary, south of the Beltline in Fitchburg. Both proposals were unanimously recommended by a citizen-led task force that has been studying boundary issues and overcrowding since last fall.

(more…)




Wanting Better Schools, Parents Seek Secession



Randal Archibold:

Ladera Heights, an unincorporated community of about 8,000 people, has for decades belonged to the school district in adjacent Inglewood, a decidedly poorer, predominantly black and Latino city whose schools have struggled academically and financially.
A group of Ladera Heights residents, many of whom have pulled their children out of Inglewood schools in favor of private ones, want their neighborhood assigned to the school district in Culver City, a more racially mixed, more affluent community than Inglewood.




Work Study School Set for 2007



Jay Matthews:

The first private high school in the area to support itself largely through wages earned by students working one day a week for local employers will open in Takoma Park in fall 2007, the Archdiocese of Washington announced yesterday.
Archdiocese officials said the new Cristo Rey school, based on a work-study model first tried in inner-city Chicago 10 years ago, will be its first new archdiocese high school in more than 55 years. It will open on the site of Our Lady of Sorrows School, a parish elementary school closing this year because of declining enrollment.




Rebuilding the American Dream Machine



The Economist:

One of the more unlikely offices to have been flooded with mail is that of the City University of New York (CUNY), a public college that lacks, among other things, a famous sports team, bucolic campuses and raucous parties (it doesn’t even have dorms), and, until recently, academic credibility.
A primary draw at CUNY is a programme for particularly clever students, launched in 2001. Some 1,100 of the 60,000 students at CUNY’s five top schools receive a rare thing in the costly world of American colleges: free education. Those accepted by CUNY’s honours programme pay no tuition fees; instead they receive a stipend of $7,500 (to help with general expenses) and a laptop computer. Applications for early admissions into next year’s programme are up 70%.
Admission has nothing to do with being an athlete, or a child of an alumnus, or having an influential sponsor, or being a member of a particularly aggrieved ethnic group—criteria that are increasingly important at America’s elite colleges. Most of the students who apply to the honours programme come from relatively poor families, many of them immigrant ones. All that CUNY demands is that these students be diligent and clever.




International Baccalaureate program considered for grades K-12



Maricella Miranda writes:
Teachers and administrators want to keep challenging students in the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school district [MN], but traditional college-prep courses may not be enough.
That’s why the International Baccalaureate program might be introduced into the curriculum districtwide. The program’s rigorous courses demand critical thinking and hands-on learning from students of all ages while focusing on international components for each subject. The IB program is taught in 1,597 schools in 122 countries.
There are three International Baccalaureate programs for grades K-12. They have common components, such as relating subjects and finding connections in local and international communities.
“We want to make sure we have something that gives our students an advantage. We want our students to stay in our district,” Babbitt said. Adding the programs to District 191’s curriculum would cost an estimated $100,000, district administrators said.
Rufus King, Milwaukee WI , known as the Rufus King International Baccalaureate High School is a WI urban, citywide, college preparatory high school that is strongly committed to math, science, technology, and the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program. Well over 1000 students each year now vie for the 350 freshmen seats. Rufus King is consistently in the top 50% of schools in the U.S., and the top 3.5% of schools worldwide in the number of IB examinations given.




More on Milwaukee Vouchers & TABOR



John Fund:

The irony is that public educators in Milwaukee believe choice has helped improve all the city’s schools. “No longer is MPS a monopoly,” says Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent William Andrekopoulos. “That competitive nature has raised the bar for educators in Milwaukee to provide a good product or they know that parents will walk.” The city’s public schools have made dramatic changes that educators elsewhere can only dream of. Public schools now share many buildings with their private counterparts, which helps alleviate the shortage of classrooms. Teachers, once assigned strictly by seniority, are now often hired by school selection committees. And 95% of district operating funds now go directly to schools, instead of being parceled out by a central office. That puts power in the hands of teachers who work directly with students.

Milwaukee schools are still struggling, but progress is obvious. Students have improved their performance on 13 out of 15 standardized tests. The annual dropout rate has fallen to 10% from 16% since the choice program started. Far from draining resources from public schools, spending has gone up in real terms by 27% since choice began as taxpayers and legislators encouraged by better results pony up more money.

Rich Eggleston says that TABOR would subvert Democracy:

In Wisconsin, the ‘Taxpayers Bill of Rights’ is being billed as a tool of democracy, but it’s actually a tool to subvert the representative democracy that to reasonable people has worked pretty well. When Milwaukee-area resident Orville Seymeyer e-mailed me and suggested I “get on the TABOR bandwagon,” this is what I told him:

via wisopinion




Task Force Insight



Dear Board,
While serving as a member on the Long Range Planning Committee for the West/Memorial Task Force I came to a few insights I would like to share.
Our charge was to seek solutions for the over-crowded schools in Memorial and Leopold attendance area as well as address the low income disparity throughout the area.

  • Overcrowding in Memorial – with current data and projected growth to be over 100% capacity in 5 of the elementary schools I believe the only solution to this problem is a new school. With the purchase of the far west land the board must believe this as well. This should be the number one priority of the growth solution for MMSD. There is space at Toki/Orchard Ridge and a few seats at Muir for this attendance area and additions could be made to Falk, or an update and expansion of Orchard Ridge/Toki could be made, but otherwise there is no room without changing programmatically.
  • Leopold overcrowding is much more complicated, as you know. This huge expansive slice of Madison and the entire city of Fitchburg attendance area has somehow become one elementary school. I do not support an addition to this school for many of the same reasons I did not like two schools on the same land. It is lots of seats in one part of town and you create problems for the future. If Shorewood or Crestwood had 1000 seats we would be busing kids from Fitchburg to that school because that’s where the space is. An addition without a new school means a principal, staff and others at this school are functioning like the other 4 – 5 hundred space schools but with double the students, is that fair to the staff of that school? Would you want to be the principal of 800 – 900 students? I would rather have a school in Fitchburg or south of the Beltline off of 14 to help Leopold and the Allis attendance area that currently is sent to the other side of Monona.
    There is space at Midvale/Lincoln, Randall, Shorewood,and there is 110 seats at Hamilton, 94 seats at Wright, and 118 seats at Cherokee. And of course the strange building of Hoyt that must have ghost or something since no one wants to touch it. There is space in West. The move of Leopold to Chavez is wrong minded since it shifts the West area problem to the overcrowded Memorial area.
    The Elephant in the Room throughout the entire Task Force was Midvale/Lincoln and the perceived lack of quality at that school. There is 75 seats at Lincoln and 62 seats at Midvale this year and each time the suggestion was made to shift students from Leopold to M/L it was met with distaste, (except for two apartment buildings of 30 students) as the memo from the Swan Creek neighborhood (see attachment) was an example. That memo, while it outraged me, is a glaring example why we can’t solve Leopold overcrowding (see memo [pdf] from Midvale Parent Jerry Eykholt to the Swan Creek Parents). On the task force Leopold was sent to Chavez, Randall/Franklin, Thoreau over and under M/L, but somehow those 137 seats at M/L seemed too far away. I think the district is failing Midvale/Lincoln.

(more…)




Stossel: How the Lack of School Choice Cheats Our Kids Out of A Good Education



John Stossel:

And while many people say, “We need to spend more money on our schools,” there actually isn’t a link between spending and student achievement.
Jay Greene, author of “Education Myths,” points out that “If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved … We’ve doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years, and yet schools aren’t better.”
He’s absolutely right. National graduation rates and achievement scores are flat, while spending on education has increased more than 100 percent since 1971. More money hasn’t helped American kids.
Ben Chavis is a former public school principal who now runs an alternative charter school in Oakland, Calif., that spends thousands of dollars less per student than the surrounding public schools. He laughs at the public schools’ complaints about money.

I’m impressed ABC devoted so much effort to education. The article includes full text and video.
Stossel also touches on Kansas City’s effort to turn around (1980’s and 1990’s) by spending more per student than any other district in the country. Madison School District Superintendent Art Rainwater implemented the largest court-ordered desegregation settlement in the nation’s history in Kansas City, Mo




Speaking up about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. & King Events in Madison



The Madison Times (now owned by former school board member, Ray Allen) recently asked various members of the Madison community to comment on the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I was honored to do so. These comments can be seen in this weeks issue. I’m also including dates and times of Dr. King events in the City. I hope you and your family are able to attend some of these events.

(more…)




Rationale for Removing School Closings from Consideration



Message from the East Attendance Area Task Force regarding rationale for Removing School Closings from Consideration. It reflects contributions from several Task Force members. This is another reason to be impressed by the hardwork of both the East and West/Memorial Task Forces.

(more…)




“School Choice: A Moral Issue?”



Shay Riley:

I am a staunch advocate for school vouchers, and a recent controversy help reaffirm my support. Residents of Ladera Heights – an affluent, mostly black community in Los Angeles metro – have organized for a territory transfer proposal to leave Inglewood’s school district of not-as-affluent blacks and Hispanics and join Culver City’s mostly white, middle-class school district with higher student achievement (registration required). However, both suburbs oppose the plan, which the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization takes up this month. Ladera Heights should have foreseen opposition by Culver City. That was a not-so-subtle hint by white folks to upscale coloreds (median household income in Ladera Heights: $90,000+); create your own good schools. Whatis even more problematic to me was the response by Inglewood officials, one of whose school board members calls the proposal racist and argues that Ladera Heights residents merely want to raise their property values (which are already higher than that of Culver City). Ahem, Ladera Heights is 70%+ black. Yet Inglewood officials want children to remain in crap schools in order to do social engineering and undermine freedom of association. However, if there was a school voucher option then the parents of Ladera Heights (which is not large enough to form its own district) could tailor a school for its community’s children.




What Are They Teaching the Teachers?



Joanne Jacobs:

Close the education schools writes George Will in Newsweek:

The surest, quickest way to add quality to primary and secondary education would be addition by subtraction: Close all the schools of education.

Will doesn’t think much of requiring would-be teachers to have the politically correct “disposition” for teaching. “The permeation of ed schools by politics is a consequence of the vacuity of their curricula, he argues, quoting Heather McDonald’s 1998 City Journal article, “Why Johnny’s Teacher Can’t Teach.”

Today’s teacher-education focus on “professional disposition” is just the latest permutation of what MacDonald calls the education schools’ “immutable dogma,” which she calls “Anything But Knowledge.”

The dogma has been that primary and secondary education is about “self-actualization” or “finding one’s joy” or “social adjustment” or “multicultural sensitivity” or “minority empowerment.” But is never about anything as banal as mere knowledge. It is about “constructing one’s own knowledge” and “contextualizing knowledge,” but never about knowledge of things like biology or history.

Will wants to return to teacher-centered classrooms led by math teachers who know math.




Bill Lueder’s 2005 “Cheap Shots” Awards



Bill Lueders:

Most Secretive Public Entity:
Madison Schools
This summer, the school board announced plans to meet in closed session to discuss teacher bennies, until this was deemed improper. In fall, the district suppressed a report that criticized school officials over the stun-gunning of a 14-year-old student on grounds that there was “pending litigation” — which of course means the litigants had certain access. It also cut a secret deal to buy land for a new school on the city’s southwest side, with board members refusing to delay final approval for even one week to allow for public input. What might voters do the next time the schools come seeking more money? Shhh! It’s a secret!




Tim Olsen on Generating Cash from the Doyle Administration Land/Building



Tim Olsen’s email to Madison Board of Education Member Ruth Robarts:

And below are the specifics you requested re calculating an estimated value for the Doyle site. You are welcome to share this email with anyone interested. And thanks for the opportunity to speak to the Board, for your comments, and for including Lucy Mathiak’s blog-article. Someone told me about her article and I’m happy to receive a copy.

(more…)




An End to the Blame Game



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

(more…)




Videoconference on youth gangs on January 11th, 2006



Please join the City of Madison, Madison Police Department, UW Police Department, Dane County Human Services, Dane County Youth Prevention Task Force, Project Hugs, NIP, Dane County Sheriffs Office and others for a nation-wide videoconference addressing strategies and community programs concerning gangs and gang violence. Following the videoconference there will be an interactive discussion about gangs in Dane County and address some strategies or programs that will assist us in dealing with our current gang issue. Light refreshments will be available.

(more…)




Cheating Our Kids



Greg Toppo:

Q: So what can parents do to fight for better schools?
A: Former American Federation of Teachers president Al Shanker said the New York City union needed to “become a disaster” to be taken as seriously as a hurricane that had worked its way up the East Coast. Parents also need to be a “disaster.” No one who has power in education got it by asking nicely. Public education is about politics, politics is about power, and if parents want control over what happens to their kids, they have to go out there and steal power from someone else. I’m not suggesting that parents be out there running schools, but if they were a little more demanding, we wouldn’t be in this mess.




The Next Retirement Time Bomb



Milt Freudenheim and Mary Williams Walsh:

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

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

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



Time for Our Own District (Fitchburg)



Kurt Gutknect writing in the Fitchburg Star:
Satellite View of Fitchurg | Madison School District Map | Oregon School District Map | Verona School District Map

You don’t have to travel very far to hear snide remarks about Fitchburg. It’s a sprawling suburb. Unchecked growth. An enclave for white folks and their McMansions.
Of course, there’s an element of truth in all of these barbs, and I frequently indulge my doubts that this appendage of Madison is a manifestation of our most noble civilizing instincts.
But I confess to getting rather fond of Fitchburg, and occasionally entertain notions that its sprawling, disjointed character is normal. The city might be evolving toward something that resembles, well, a city.
My main reservations about Fitchburg have more to do with doubts that 21st century American culture is really creating a better world for the next generation. For better or worse, Fitchburg is a product of the times. It’s unrealistic to expect us to evolve into an enclave against virulent consumerism or to stanch the flow of SUVs.
All things considered, Fitchburg does about as well as can be expected, and maybe better than many other burbs.

(more…)




Report Says States Aim Low in Science (Wisconsin’s Grade = “F”)



via reader Rebecca Cole: Michael Janofsky:

The report, released Wednesday by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, suggests that the focus on reading and math as required subjects for testing under the federal law, No Child Left Behind, has turned attention away from science, contributing to a failure of American children to stay competitive in science with their counterparts abroad.
The report also appears to support concerns raised by a growing number of university officials and corporate executives, who say that the failure to produce students well-prepared in science is undermining the country’s production of scientists and engineers and putting the nation’s economic future in jeopardy.

The full report is available here.

Wisconsin’s results are available in a one page PDF file:

The Wisconsin Model Academic Standards announce confidently that they “set clear and specific goals for teaching and learning.” That was not the judgment of our review. They are, in fact, generally vague and nonspecific, very heavy in process, and so light in science discipline content as to render them nearly useless at least as a response to problems for which state learning standards are supposed to be a remedy.

(more…)




PAGING RANDY ALEXANDER?



Or, What Is This Old Building Worth?

WashingtonSchool1.jpg.jpeg
Photo of Washington Public Grade and Orthopedic School, 545 W. Dayton St., Madison Trust for Historic Preservation. To see where it is located, click here.
Complex problems require creative solutions. But what happens when innovative ideas don’t get serious consideration?
This fall, the Madison School Board assembled two task forces to propose solutions to the knotty problems of shifting enrollments and facility use in the East and West/Memorial High School attendance areas. The people tapped to serve on the task forces have put in long hours and, in the process, have come up with some creative options that go beyond the “standard” proposals to close schools and/or move boundaries. Unfortunately, at least one credible idea for fully using space in East side schools with low enrollments has been taken off the table.
The proposal definitely represents “new thinking.” Rather than closing schools that don’t have “enough students,” the proposal is to sell the Doyle administration building and relocate district administration to one or more of the under-enrolled schools on Madison’s East side.

(more…)




Get Off the Bus: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the life of Ms. Rosa Parks



The Martin Luther King, Jr. Coalition is inviting all local citizens to share in a brief ceremony commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott. The ceremony will be held on Monday, December 5, 2005 at 12 noon in the lobby of the Madison Municipal Building (215 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.). It will begin at noon with a brief program featuring comments by current civil rights leadership as well as Madison’s Mayor. Their words of reflection will be followed by a reenactment of Ms. Parks’ courageous stand on the bus some 50 years ago.

(more…)




West HS English 9 and 10: Show us the data!



Here is a synopsis of the English 10 situation at West HS.
Currently — having failed to receive any reply from BOE Performance and Achievement Committee Chair Shwaw Vang to our request that he investigate this matter and provide an opportunity for public discussion — we are trying to get BOE President Carol Carstensen to put a discussion of the English 10 proposal (and the apparent lack of data supporting its implementation) on the agenda for a BOE meeting.  Aside from the fact that there is serious doubt that the course, as proposed, will meet the educational needs of the high and low end students, it is clear we are witnessing yet another example of school officials making radical curricular changes without empirical evidence that they will work and without open, honest and respectful dialogue with the community.
As the bumper sticker says, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!”

(more…)




Letter to Performance and Achievement Committee



The following letter was hand delivered to Shwaw Vang a week ago, and email copies were sent to the Board, Superintendent Rainwater, and Assistant Superintendent Pam Nash. There so far has been no response. A follow up email was sent yesterday to the Performance and Achievement Committee again asking that they look into why the English 9 curriculum has not worked in raising student achievement before allowing West High School to implement changes in the 10th grade English curriculum.
Dear Shwaw,
We are writing to you in your capacity as Chair of the BOE Performance and Achievement Committee to ask that you address a critical situation currently unfolding at West High School.

(more…)




WSJ: Texas School Finance Lesson



Wall Street Journal Review and Outlook:

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

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

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

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




Milwaukee Schools Superintendent Review



http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/nov05/373715.aspAlan Borsuk:

But issues facing MPS, including budget constraints, school closings and a recent decision by an arbitrator on a teacher contract that was widely unpopular among teachers, have subjected Andrekopoulos to increased heat.
The issues have underscored the way the board is frequently divided into two factions, with five members consistently supporting Andrekopoulos and the other four ranging from mild support to general opposition.
On the recent high-profile votes to close Juneau High School, the board repeatedly split 5-4, including six votes of 5-4 in one meeting.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel argues that Andrekopoul should have more time:

The reasons for supporting Andrekopoulos are as clear now as they were in 2004. The superintendent may have the toughest job in Milwaukee. No one in the country, as far as we know, has been completely successful at turning around a big-city school district. But Andrekopoulos has a vision for reform and a plan to make that vision a reality. He was hired to carry out that vision – which includes a move toward smaller high schools and cutting the district’s central bureaucracy – and has had some success in moving it forward. But much more needs to be done.




Anti-NCLB Lawsuit Fails



Joanne Jacobs:

A judge has thrown out a lawsuit seeking to block No Child Left Behind.

The NEA and school districts in three states had argued that schools should not have to comply with requirements that were not paid for by the federal government.

Chief U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman, based in eastern Michigan, said, “Congress has appropriated significant funding” and has the power to require states to set educational standards in exchange for federal money.

The ruling came as no surprise. However, the teachers’ union says it plans to appeal.

The union got a lot of publicity for the lawsuit, Eduwonk notes. The dismissal won’t get as much ink.




Carol Carstensen’s Message to PTO Presidents



Madison Board of Education President Carol Carstensen:

Subject: Nov. 21 Update
Parent Group Presidents:
BUDGET FACTOID:
The school district has been under revenue caps since 1993 when all school district budgets were frozen and then permitted to increase only by an amount per pupil each year (this year it is $250). That amount approximates a budget increase of 2.5% (the city and county are both struggling with cuts to keep their budgets close to a 4% increase).
Board meetings on Monday, November 21:
The Board looked at a comparison of the school district policy on arresting a child at school and the Police Department’s guidelines there are some significant differences, mostly in the area of informing the parent/guardian before the child is questioned and in making sure the child fully understands his/her rights at the time of questioning. The Board took no action but did ask the administration to continue working with the Police Department to try to bring their procedures more in line with school district policy.

(more…)




Bush Administration Grants Leeway on ‘No Child’ Rules



By Nick Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 22, 2005; A01
The Bush administration has begun to ease some key rules for the controversial No Child Left Behind law, opening the door to a new way to rate schools, granting a few urban systems permission to provide federally subsidized tutoring and allowing certain states more time to meet teacher-quality requirements.
The Education Department’s actions could signal a new phase for school improvement efforts nearly four years after the law’s enactment. Taken together, these actions amount to a major response to critics who have called No Child Left Behind rigid and unworkable. They also help the administration combat efforts to amend the law in Congress.

(more…)




MMSD and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Dane County Expand Mentoring Program



The Madison Metropolitan School District and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Dane County are expanding the SOL Mentor Program to Leopold Elementary and Cherokee Middle Schools. The SOL Mentor Program continues to serve Latino, Spanish-speaking students at Frank Allis Elementary and Sennett Middle Schools and aims to match an additional 75 students with adult volunteers in the community over the next three years.

(more…)




Dane County United Calls for Child Care Funding



More day care funding urged for low-income kids
By Pat Schneider, the Capital Times
November 17, 2005
Every kid deserves a piece of the pie.
That was the message Wednesday, when members of Dane County United joined with the Bright and Early Coalition to put out the message that more public money is needed to support quality child care programs for low-income families.
One half of Madison children enrolled in day care are in city-accredited programs, said Vernon Blackwell, a member of Dane County United, a grass-roots social justice advocacy group.

(more…)




Bus Battle Brewing at LaFollette



Angela Bettis:

Students and teachers at LaFollette High School are fighting for equal bus service.
They’ll take their argument to the city council Tuesday.
Limited bus service from Lafollette on the east side to students’ homes on the south side of the city is creating problems academically.
Students say they are not able to go to the same after school activities as kids at other schools because of the ongoing transportation problem.
Andres Garcia runs an after school Latino Club, but has been having problems getting students in the door.
“Because of the bus problems, no one was actually able to stay,” he said.
Teachers have said students who need more help learning English are missing out.
“We have academics that meet after school and clubs,” said science teacher Lisa Endicott. “Some of those things we can’t get the kids home for academics is the thing that hurts the most.”




A different student viewpoint of West High



This was forwarded to the West High listserve with the request that it be posted as part of the current discussion about changes at West High.

When I read the anonymous email from a current West freshman who is defined as “talented and gifted,” I could not help but feel that I should write about my own personal experiences. I am in the exact same position as the previous writer (a current freshman at West High, defined as “talented and gifted.”), but I have completely opposite views. My time at West so far has been quite enjoyable. While some of the core freshman classes are indeed rather simple, I do not feel that my assignments are “busy work.” While most classes may be easy, they still teach worthwhile information.

(more…)




MMSD: Shutting out the public



Isthmus, November 11, 2005, reports on the refusal of the MMSD administration and Board of Education to release details on a land purchase for a new school. Isthmus posted the full article and supporting documents in the Document Feed of thedailypage.com. Here are excerpts:

Jim Zellmer doesn’t know whether buying land for a new elementary school on the city’s far southwest side is a good idea. But he’s sure keeping the deal secret almost until the moment of final approval is a bad one. . . .
The deal was kept under wraps until 4:30 last Friday afternoon, when the school district put the contract into media folders just before closing for the weekend. At Monday’s meeting, Robarts and Kobza urged the board to delay approval for one week, to allow for public input, including that of a task force studying west-side school overcrowding. . . .
But Kobza’s motion failed on a 3-3 vote, with board members Bill Keys, Juan Jose Lopez and Johnny Winston Jr. opposed. Keys haughtily challenged critics of the secret deal to “go ahead and file charges”; Kobza urged members of the public to take up his suggestion.
On Wednesday, Isthmus followed through, asking Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard to investigate and prosecute. . . .




School Districts Sharing Services



Reason Foundation:

in many parts of the country 40 to 50 percent of education funding never makes it to the classroom. A new report by Reason and Deloitte finds that saving just a quarter of the tax dollars spent by school districts on non-instructional operations could save $9 billion. To put this number in perspective, it is equivalent to 900 new schools or more than 150,000 additional teachers. “School funding and per pupil spending are always hot-button issues,” said Lisa Snell, co-author of the report. “Sharing services gives schools and districts a great opportunity to send a lot more money straight to classrooms, where it belongs. With much of the education world facing tough budget decisions, sharing services is a dramatically under-used option that can yield significant results.”

Full Report [PDF] Obviously a good idea, however like many such initiatives (city / county consolidation is another example), execution is generally non-trivial. Reason has a number of education oriented publications posted here.