schoolinfosystem.org
Madison School District Superintendent Art Rainwater: By now, I’m sure you know that last Friday a 15 year old boy entered Weston School in Cazenovia (Sauk County) and allegedly shot and killed the principal. This incident has stirred in all of us the uneasy realization that this can happen anywhere, at anytime. We mourn the […]
Too busy to continue the farewell and the urge to share information remains. This is from the October School News a publication of the WASB. Linked here. Excerpt: SN: Gov. Doyle, in the 2005-07 state budget, you provided more than $700 million for K-12 schools and restored two-thirds funding in the second year of the […]
Jean Johnson, Ana Maria Arumi and Amber Ott [350K PDF]: It’s probably natural for leaders of organizations to be upbeat about their institutions, and the nation’s school children might not be well-served by superintendents and principals who see public schools as places of disappointment, failure and ineptitude. Even so, the positive, almost buoyant outlook of […]
Michael Grunwald: To some extent, the controversy over Reading First reflects an older controversy over reading, pitting “phonics” advocates such as Doherty against “whole language” practitioners such as Johnson. The administration believes in phonics, which emphasizes repetitive drills that teach children to sound out words. Johnson and other phonics skeptics try to teach the meaning […]
Amy Bounds: Supporters of Boulder Valley’s measure say the hefty price tag is the result of cuts to the district’s maintenance budget, along with an average building age of 43 years. The combination, they say, has led to schools that are in bad shape. “We have a lot of old buildings,” school board member Ken […]
Erin Richards: A study of Milwaukee schoolchildren published today in the journal Science underscores what proponents of Montessori education have believed for decades: that Montessori students might be better prepared academically and socially than students in traditional classrooms. Among the findings: 5-year-old Montessori students had better reading, math and social skills than 5-year-old non-Montessori children, […]
This is the third in a series of farewell posts to the SIS blog. I still don’t know how long this will take; I don’t have a schedule but I don’t think too much longer. There are still things I want to say before I leave this forum. “The Long Goodbye?” I hope not, but […]
Kathleen Carroll: The growing number of children identified as autistic — and the steep cost of educating them — is fueling a boom in public school programs. In Bergenfield, a dozen preschool students are attending the inaugural class of the TriValley Academy, a collaborative effort with New Milford and Dumont. Districts including Leonia and West […]
When I’m doing the very best I can You’re pouring water On a drowning man You’re pouring water On a drowning man “Pouring Water on Drowning Man” Dani McCormick & Drew Baker Download file”>Listen to James Carr’s version This is the second of a series of farewell posts to this blog. My original intent had […]
Patrick Welsh (A high school english teacher): One of the biggest concerns of parents for the new school year is this: What kind of kids are in my child’s classroom? The answer to this question is particularly difficult for parents of average students, the most forgotten group today. All parents want their children to be […]
From the list serve of the pro-referendum group, Communities and Schools Together (CAST): We have at least three people willing to translate into Spanish (anyone for Hmong?). I think that the “newsletter blurb” and the FAQ are musts. Do we want anything else? I’ll get these started with the volunteers on Wednesday or Thursday. At […]
The National Academies: Improving science education in kindergarten through eighth grade will require major changes in how science is taught in America’s classrooms, as well as shifts in commonly held views of what young children know and how they learn, says a new report from the National Research Council. After decades of education reform efforts […]
Mark your calendars! Stage Q is having a benefit performance of Carolyn Gage’s play “Ugly Ducklings” for GSA for Safe Schools. Under the direction of Jan Levine Thal, the benefit performance will be held on Friday, September 29th, at 8:00 p.m. at the Bartell Theater (113 E Mifflin Street). Call 608-661-9696, ext. 3, for tickets. […]
A small study and I confess I haven’t looked at the study itself, but a reminder that some important aspects of education aren’t measured by standardized tests. TJM Research: School diversity may ease racial prejudice More bias seen in kids in mostly white setting By Shankar Vedantam The Washington Post Published September 19, 2006 White […]
Molly Snyder Edler: Artists Working in Education (AWE) presents “A Celebration of Children’s Art,” a collection of work created this summer by kids who participated in AWE’s Truck Studio Program. “A Celebration of Children’s Art” hangs in the Milwaukee City Hall Rotunda, Sept. 19 through Oct. 6. There is an opening reception on Tuesday, Sept. […]
NY Times Editorial: The countries that outperform the United States in math and science education have some things in common. They set national priorities for what public school children should learn and when. They also spend a lot of energy ensuring that every school has a high-quality curriculum that is harnessed to clearly articulated national […]
Justin Pope AP Education Writer Though just teenagers, the applicants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are a scarily accomplished lot. They have started businesses and published academic research. One built a working nuclear reactor in his garage. In their high schools, they have led every extracurricular club and mastered the SAT. But surprisingly few […]
DEBORAH ZIFF Wisconsin State Journal Sunday, September 17, 2006 dziff@madison.com Madison West High School senior Eliza Zimmerer is a teaching assistant in a bio- technology class. She mentors younger students and leads freshmen through orientation. She’s involved in student government. Captain of the varsity tennis team. Honor roll. French honor society. Her resume goes on […]
Destroying Public Schools New York Times September 16, 2006 At Odds Over Schools By BRUCE LAMBERT LAWRENCE, N.Y. [This] school district has been changing, house by house, as Orthodox Jewish families have flocked here over the last two decades, gradually at first and then in growing numbers. While not yet a majority, the Orthodox have […]
Charles Anderson: A hint of the politicians’ dilemma was buried in a May 10 New York Times-CBS News poll about the performance of U.S. elected officials on a host of policy issues. Not surprisingly, neither President Bush nor Congress earned high marks. What startled me, though, was the response to this question: “Regardless of how […]
Madison Schools Superintendent Art Rainwater: Twenty-two year old Louisa Brayton stepped before her class of 12 students to begin the first day of school. It was not only her first day but also the first day for all of her students and more importantly the first day of school in Madison Wisconsin. It’s March, 1838 […]
Critics of “Fuzzy” Methods Cheer Educators’ Findings; Drills Without Calculators. Taking Cues from Singapore. John Hechinger: The nation’s math teachers, on the front lines of a 17-year curriculum war, are getting some new marching orders: Make sure students learn the basics. In a report to be released today, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, […]
Matthew Ladner: In the past, a lack of data enabled stagnation. Armchair observations of real-estate agents were often the most sophisticated opinions regarding the quality of local schools. Today, online services like www.greatschools.net provide a mountain of comparative testing and parental review data in a few short clicks. New technologies and practices, such as self-paced […]
Maria Sacchetti: One Needham teacher gushed about the time a student worried that Australia would fall off the planet — and how that led to a lesson on gravity. A Brookline teacher banned the word “stuff” from her fourth-graders’ vocabulary. A young teacher, also from Needham, got personal, thanking parents for their support after her […]
The Economist: FEW children, in the developed world, spend their summer holidays bringing in the harvest. Yet the timing of the summer break dates from the days when child labour was too valuable to lose in the vital final weeks of the growing season. The roots of modern education, in Britain and elsewhere, lie in […]
Many of you probably read John Stossel’s polemic in the Sunday Wisconsin State Journal (9/3/06). I’d reprint here, but I don’t want to give it a wider readership than it already has. Instead I want to say few words about a central fallacy in the thinking of Stossel (and many others who wish to destroy […]
Voters evaluating the Madison School District’s November referendum (construct a new far west side elementary school, expand Leopold Elementary and refinance District debt) have much to consider. Phil Brinkman added to the mix Sunday noting that “total property taxes paid have grown at a faster pace than income”. A few days later, the US Census […]
Chris Whittle: Quiz: Of the 10 largest school systems, which have made the best gains in student scores? Answer: Philadelphia and New York. Between 2002 and 2005 for grades K-8, Philly gained 19.5 points in proficiency on the state assessment system, while NYC schools posted a 13-point increase on state exams. Even if you normalize […]
Nanci Hellmich: Just increasing the amount of time students are supposed to spend in physical education class is no guarantee they’ll move more, a new study shows. Obesity experts have been calling for children to go to gym class more often to help stop obesity in young people. About one-third of children and teens in […]
Karen Batka: I puttered around the kitchen as Grace munched on her calcium-added Goldfish and worked on long division. “Mom, what does high fat content mean?” she asked. “Why?” I asked, choosing to answer a question with a question. “Paige said that Lunchables aren’t healthy because they have a high fat content.” Once again, reality […]
Elissa Gootman: More than a decade after the city created a special institute to prepare black and Hispanic students for the mind-bendingly difficult test that determines who gets into New York’s three most elite specialized high schools, the percentage of such students has not only failed to rise, it has declined. The drop at Stuyvesant […]
Yuki Noguchi: Unlike their parents, today’s youth have grown up in the age of public disclosure. Keeping an Internet diary has become de rigueur; social lives and private thoughts are laid bare. For parents in high-profile positions, however, it means their children can exploit a generational disconnect to espouse their own points of view, or […]
NYC Teacher Bruce Winokur: Teaching mathematics has been my profession in New York City public schools since 1969, first at I.S. 201 in District 5, then at J.H.S. 17 in District 2, and since 1983, at Stuyvesant High School. I’m also the father of a 10-year-old daughter who attends District 2 schools and a member […]
Sarah Carr: “When I first started in education, marketing wasn’t something you even had to do,” said Suzanne Kirby, principal of MPS’ Bell Middle School. Now the south side school has a more strategic effort in place. Kirby cleared her schedule for the summer and invited any prospective family in for a personal tour of […]
Lisa Belkin: By any health measure, today’s children are in crisis. Seventeen percent of American children are overweight, and increasing numbers of children are developing high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes, which, until a few years ago, was a condition seen almost only in adults. The obesity rate of adolescents has tripled […]
Daniel Golden: The prop room on the fourth floor of Houghton Mifflin Co.’s offices here holds all manner of items, including a blackboard, a globe, an aquarium — and a wheelchair. Able-bodied children selected through modeling agencies pose in the wheelchair for Houghton Mifflin’s elementary and secondary textbooks. If they’re the wrong size for the […]
Alan Borsuk: Wisconsin officials take pride in being at the top of at least one list nationally when it comes to putting “highly qualified” teachers in classrooms, but Wednesday they found themselves at the bottom of the list when it comes to meeting federal rules for doing exactly that. U.S. Department of Education officials announced […]
From Channel 3000: Fall is right around the corner. That means classes back in session and another school referendum for Madison voters. A group calling itself CAST is gearing up to get voters to say yes to a $23.5 million referendum on Nov. 7. CAST stands for Communities And Schools Together. Rich Rubasch is heading […]
My daughter is the “Mothering Type”. You know the kind. She still loves dolls beyond her friends, and loves pets, and she took the babysitting class as soon as possible so she could be around small children. She is always the person in the class the helps and socializes with the high needs kids in […]
Diana Jean Schemo: WHEN the federal Education Department recently reported that children in private schools generally did no better than comparable students at public schools on national tests of math and reading, the findings were embraced by teachers’ unions and liberals, and dismissed by supporters of school voucher programs. But for many educators and policy […]
University of Florida: However, the trend once known as “mainstreaming”— widely considered the best option for such students – appears to have stalled in some parts of the country, the study’s authors report. And a student’s geographic location, rather than the severity of his disability, often determines how he will spend his school days, the […]
Engadget: While programs like these have a solid premise, we envision kids making friends for more than just social reasons as middle-school cafeterias turn into fast-paced trading blocks to circumvent the system as connector children smuggle in junk food from the outside world. Or maybe we’re just letting our imaginations get away with ourselves again.
Donna Ford, Ph.D., and Gilman Whiting, Ph.D., both of Vanderbilt University, are two leading African American education scholars who have dedicated their professional lives to the issue of minority achievement. Professor Ford is a nationally recognized expert in gifted education, multicultural education, and the recruitment and retention of diverse students in gifted education. Professor Whiting […]
Neal Gleason in a letter to the Isthmus Editor: I have long admired Marc Eisen’s thoughtful prose. But his recent struggle to come to grips with a mutli-ethnic world vvers from xenophobia to hysteria (“Brave New World”, 6/23/06). His “unsettling” contact with “stylish” Chinese and “turbaned Sikhs” at a summer program for gifted children precipitated […]
Five years after state legislators released them from state-imposed revenue caps, school districts’ community service tax levies have nearly tripled, reaching $49 million this year. The rampant growth in these property taxes – earmarked for community-based activities – took place as the total levies for schools statewide rose by 22.7%. That has raised concerns about […]
US Department of Education: Children in Reading First classrooms receive significantly more reading instruction and schools participating in the program are much more likely to have a reading coach, according to the Reading First Implementation Evaluation: Interim Report, released today by the U.S. Department of Education. The report shows significant differences between what Reading First […]
Denis Doyle: If education is funded without measuring results decisions are based on impulse and sentiment, a risky business that. Yet if education is to be funded on results we need a high degree of social consensus on what results are desirable (and measurable). As it happens, this sentiment does not respect party lines. Former […]
NY Times Editorial: The national education reform effort has long suffered from magical thinking about what it takes to improve children’s chances of learning. Instead of homing in on teacher training and high standards, things that distinguish effective schools from poor ones, many reformers have embraced the view that the public schools are irreparably broken […]
Susan Troller: Nancy Greenwald, an attorney and one of the parents involved in the complaint, urged the board to accept Superintendent Art Rainwater’s recommendation that Vazquez be fired and to turn over all relevant files to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, which has begun an investigation that could lead to the revocation of Vazquez’s […]
My 13 year old son was complaining the other day about how “hard” it was he had to get up and swim at 7 a.m. for his local swim club. (7 is a little early when it’s cold but…) He then complained about umpiring a Little League game because a coach yelled at him. As […]
Budget Hangs On Enrollment Middleton Watching Numbers The Capital Times Tuesday, July 11, 2006 By Christopher Michaels Increased enrollment in the weeks preceding the start of the school year could mean more state aid for the Middleton-Cross Plains School District. It also could mean an easing of planned staff reductions of special concern to one […]
Shavar Jeffries: It is well beyond time for people of color to challenge vehemently the educational policies of the Democratic leadership that have failed our children for decades. Too many Democrats would prefer to deny poor folk the opportunity to make educational decisions for themselves – notwithstanding these Democrats wouldn’t permit their own children to […]
Posted on Edwonk FROM JONATHAN KOZOL: An Update, Bulletin, and Manifesto to the Education Activists who have asked me: Where do we go next? June 16, 2006 Dear This is to report that, at long last, the network of activists in education that I’ve been assembling from the thousands of teachers and advocates for children […]
Peter Wood (Provost of New York City’s Kings College): By 2036, the forms of teacher preparation that currently prevail in Western nations will have sunk into oblivion. We will have discarded schools of education, the pedagogies they teach, and the certification apparatus that they serve. Such schools, pedagogies, and certifications have clung to life stubbornly […]
Rod Paige: DUMB liberal ideas in education are a dime a dozen, and during my time as superintendent of Houston’s schools and as the United States secretary of education I battled against all sorts of progressivist lunacy, from whole-language reading to fuzzy math to lifetime teacher tenure. Today, however, one of the worst ideas in […]
Nicholas Kristof follows up Marc Eisen’s recent words on a world of competition for our children: But the investments in China’s modernization that are most impressive of all are in human capital. The blunt fact is that many young Chinese in cities like Shanghai or Beijing get a better elementary and high school education than […]
I realize that some of the legal frameworks differ but think that this serves as a good remider that TIFs have an impact on school funding everywhere. From the Chicago Reader See also: Epoch TimesTJM By Ben Joravsky The Schools Scam Under the TIF system millions of dollars in property taxes are being diverted from […]
The Economist: That said, government should not be looking for ways to haul the rich down. Rather, it should help others, especially the extremely poor, to climb up—and that must mean education. Parts of the American system are still magnificent, such as its community colleges. But as countless international league tables show, its schools are […]
Much good stuff here but I’ll just point to the “Blueberry Story,” which encapsulates how public education differs from business. Click the title link for a version with comments TJM The Yearlykos Education Panel – a review / reflection by teacherken Sat Jun 17, 2006 at 03:19:37 AM PDT NOTE also crossposted at MyLeftWing I […]
Brent Staples: Imagine yourself the parent of an otherwise bright and engaging child who has reached the fourth grade without learning to read. After battling the public school bureaucracy for what seems like a lifetime, you enroll your child in a specialized private school for struggling readers. Over the next few years, you watch in […]
National Center for Education Statistics: This website is an integrated collection of the indicators and analyses published in The Condition of Education 2000–2006. Some indicators may have been updated since they appeared in print Chester Finn has more: –A huge fraction of U.S. school children now attend “schools of choice”: more than half of K-12 […]
Susan Troller: Don’t assume that a school is bad just because it’s not making adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law. That comment came today from Madison School Board member Lucy Mathiak, whose children attend or have attended East High School. East and three other Madison public high schools were cited […]
Heather G. Peske and Kati Haycock for Edtrust [PDF Report]: Next month, for the first time, leaders in every state must deliver to the Secretary of Education their plans for ensuring that low-income and minority students in their states are not taught disproportionately by inexperienced, out-of-field, or uncertified teachers. For many, this process will be […]
Susan Troller: The parents at Midvale Elementary School have heard it all: It’s a school no ambitious parent wants. The bus rides are long and unpleasant as children are sent far from their homes along the hazardous Beltline. After more than 20 years, the pairing of Midvale and Lincoln elementary schools, developed as part of […]
Madison Schools Superintendent Art Rainwater: This fall we will welcome over 2,000 kindergarten children to their first day of school. What an exciting and scary day for them. They will come from many cultures, they will be many colors and they will each begin their thirteen year journey with different skills, attitudes and backgrounds. Our […]
APPLETON (AP) – Lunch hour at two local schools became the subject for a film crew as part of a federal agency’s plan to show how the Appleton district is trying to promote healthy lifestyles and fight the epidemic of childhood obesity. The media crew also filmed fitness programs at Edison Elementary School and West […]
Susan Saulny:In what is an elite tweak on home schooling — and a throwback to the gilded days of education by governess or tutor — growing numbers of families are choosing the ultimate in private school: hiring teachers to educate their children in their own homes. Unlike the more familiar home-schoolers of recent years, these […]
Tracy Jan: But the experience — eight-hour school days, tiny classes with demanding teachers, and Saturday sessions — was more trying than any of them expected. The students, who delayed high school a year to attend Beacon, have emerged with a sense of how satisfying a tough school can be, but also of how unchallenging […]
Thank you to students, parents and community members who wrote to and spoke before the School Board in support of elementary strings. It may seem, at times, that your letters or statements fall on deaf ears, but that is not the case. Each and every letter and each and every statement of support is critical […]
Bob Sipchen: By the end of this column I will have selected the next superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Because I believe that the children, parents, teachers and citizens of Los Angeles are entitled to transparency in such deliberations, I invite you to join me as I work my way toward a […]
A letter to the editor Dear Editor: I appreciated Susan Troller’s recent article where she examined the impact of eroding budgets on schools and classrooms throughout Madison. Unfortunately, this situation is not unique to Madison schools. The repeated cutting of school budgets is strongly affecting classrooms, teachers and students in scores of school districts throughout […]
J.D. Fisher: Here’s a brief list of the research (you can find it here) about parent involvement related to student achievement. Enjoy. Ann Shaver and Richard Walls (1998) looked at the impact of school-based parent workshops on the achievement of 335 Title I students in nine schools in a West Virginia district . . . […]
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 […]
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 […]
Board member stirs controversy Baraboo News Republic Thursday May 25, 2006 By Christina Beam BARABOO – New Baraboo School Board member Kevin Bartol (kbartol@baraboo.k12.wi.us) stirred up some controversy at his second meeting Monday night when he suggested district policy be amended so that only teachable students be enrolled in Baraboo’s public schools. “There are some […]
In an effort to build community, enhance self-esteem and inspire the spirit of giving among its students, Lapham Elementary School has organized a very special service-learning project. The “Lapham to Lubasi Run-a-thon”, held Wednesday May 10th, was led by one of the school’s second grade classes to raise awareness of poverty in Africa and to […]
Christine Maddox Ellerbee: I am committed to my home here in Camden. But that commitment is seriously being tested by the state of Camden’s public schools. As a parent, I have done all I can do. Many of us find ourselves in the same boat. We have agitated for change, made phone calls and visited […]
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”. […]
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 […]
…there are lessons we can absorb, and maybe the easiest is that respect for education pays dividends.
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 […]
MMSD’s School Board meets tonight to discuss the 2006-2007 school budget. There are no public appearances on tonight’s agenda, but the Madison community can continue to email the School Board in support of elementary strings at: comments@madison.k12.wi.us. Thank you to the parents and community who have attended the public hearing and who have sent emails […]
Nicholas Kristof: Why are Asian-Americans so good at school? Or, to put it another way, why is Xuan-Trang Ho so perfect? Trang came to the United States in 1994 as an 11-year-old Vietnamese girl who spoke no English. Her parents, neither having more than a high school education, settled in Nebraska and found jobs as […]
Dear Madison Community, Children and parents are encouraged to speak in support of elementary strings and to bring their instruments to tonight’s School Board public hearing on the budget if they would like to play. My husband, Fred Schrank, who is the principal bassist with the MSO and who teaches orchestra to elementary and middle […]
I sent the following letter to the School Board last week after reviewing data and text on elementary strings sent to the School Board by the Fine Arts Coordinator. In late March, I spoke before the School Board about working together on strengthening strings and fine arts education and hoped that we would not see […]
A longtime reader emailed David Brooks most recent column: Around 1970, Walter Mischel launched a classic experiment. He left a succession of 4-year-olds in a room with a bell and a marshmallow. If they rang the bell, he would come back and they could eat the marshmallow. If, however, they didn’t ring the bell and […]
Wisconsin State Journal editorial Wednesday, May 3, 2006 Madison should take a bow and be proud of its decade-long effort to improve early reading skills and boost school achievement for all racial groups. Yet the hard work isn’t over and may be getting harder. UW-Madison education researchers hailed Madison this week for shrinking its racial […]
The National School Board Association argues that local school boards exist to translate the community’s educational goals for its children into programs and to hold staff accountable for the quality and effectiveness of the programs: Your school board sets the standard for achievement in your district, incorporating the community’s view of what students should know […]
Please Help Save Elementary Strings!!! How: Ask the New School Board – Work with the Community to Build Fine Arts Education! When: Starting May 9th Other districts facing fiscal and academic achievement challenges have had successes maintaining and growing their fine arts education – through strategic planning, active engagement and real partnerships with their communities. […]
Bob Reber: Governor Doyle recently vetoed Assembly Bill 1060 which would have reaffirmed and clarified the state’s commitment to virtual public schools in Wisconsin. Prior to his decision to veto the bill, WEAC (the teacher’s union) was making noise about the “outsourcing of education” to people who would not be qualified teachers, instructors or presenters […]
Carol Carstensen: What is Fund 80, and why are people saying such awful things aboutit? Fund 80 is the state accounting code for community services expenditures,the major portion of which is for Madison SchoolCarstensen Community Recreation (MSCR) and the district’s cable channel 10.The current budget for community services is $11 million. Of that $8 millionis […]
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz spoke at yesterday’s Rotary club meeting. His 3416 word state of the city speech included 159 directly related to our local public schools: 8. We need to work more seamlessly to maintain our excellent public school system. Our public schools have recently been ranked the third best in the nation. Yet, […]
Ledyard King: Public school teachers in the nation’s wealthiest communities continue to be more qualified than those in the poorest despite a federal law designed to provide all children equal educational opportunity. Preliminary data released by the Department of Education show that in 39 states, the chance of finding teachers who know their subjects are […]
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 […]
Expressions of parent concern over the quality of third-quarter report cards for students in Madison’s elementary schools continue. Parents at Thoreau School joined parents from other schools who have wondered why their children make so little progress in the third quarter of the year in many subject areas that no information on progress can be […]
Other districts facing fiscal and academic achievement challenges have had successes maintaining and growing their fine arts education – through strategic planning, active engagement and real partnerships with their communities. In Tuscon, AZ, with a large low income and hispanic population, test scores of this population have climbed measurably (independent evaluations confirmed this). This state […]
Ben Feller: Teachers are far more pessimistic than parents about getting every student to succeed in reading and math as boldly promised by the No Child Left Behind Act. That’s left a huge expectations gap between the two main sets of adults in children’s lives. An AP-AOL Learning Services Poll found nearly eight in 10 […]
Recently, a parent expressed concern about the quality of third-quarter report cards at Crestwood Elementary School. Can We Talk 3: Third-Quarter Report Cards Today a parent of students at Elvejhem Elementary asked Madison School Board members why the teachers only reported on 10% of content areas. I have asked Superintendent Art Rainwater for a response […]
Jay Greene: Accountability is a constructive and increasingly powerful force in the education of New York City schoolchildren. It starts with report cards and runs far deeper. Third-graders have to pass a basic skills test to be promoted to fourth grade. High school seniors cannot earn a Regents diploma without passing a series of exams. […]
Jessica Blanchard: Rick Burke remembers looking at his elementary-school daughter’s math homework and wondering where the math was. Like many Seattle schools, his daughter’s school was teaching “reform” math, a style that encourages students to discover math principles and derive formulas themselves. Burke, an engineer, worried that his daughter wasn’t learning basic math skills. “It […]