schoolinfosystem.org
I was leaving for a trip the other day and scooped up some reading material off my desk for the plane ride. I found myself holding three documents: one was the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy for 2006; another was a new study by the Economic Strategy Institute entitled “America’s Technology Future at Risk,” about […]
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 […]
March 7, 2006 Madison School Board Candidate Forum Thoreau Elementary’s PTO held a (reasonably well attended – roughly 24) candidate forum last night. Excerpts, questions, links and video available below:
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. […]
Kurt Gutknecht and Bill Livick pen an interesting article, published recently in the Fitchburg Star: Several teachers at area schools did not return calls asking for their opinion on the act. Administrators were less reluctant to weigh in. The principal of a Madison middle school, who did not want to be identified, gave a qualified […]
Fordham Foundation criticizes focus on ‘discovery learning.’ More than two-thirds of states have science standards that earn a C grade or worse for their quality, in part because they overemphasize “discovery learning,” the idea that students should be encouraged to acquire knowledge through their own investigation and experimentation, a study issued last week concludes. Too […]
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 […]
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 […]
Here is the full text of SLC Evaluator Bruce King’s recent report on the plan to implement a common English 10 course at West HS. Evaluation of the SLC Project at West High School The 10th Grade English Course M.Bruce King, Project Evaluator 608-263-4769, mbking1@wisc.edu 2 November 2005 The development and implementation of the common […]
Daniel Henninger: She went to the Public Education Foundation of Little Rock. The Foundation had no money for her, and the Little Rock system’s budget was a non-starter. So the Foundation produced a private, anonymous donor, which made union approval unnecessary. Together this small group worked out the program’s details. The Stanford test results would […]
Jan Davidson, co-author of “Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds” will be speaking in Madison on Tuesday, October 11, 2005 at 7:30 p.m. in the McDaniels Auditorium of the MMSD Doyle Administration Building. Jan and her husband Bob founded the Davidson Institute for Talent Development – a nonprofit operating foundation whose […]
It turns out that traditionalists and reformers were both right in their own way, but both were overzealous in their devotion to a particular mode of instruction and in their blanket dismissal of the competing point of view.
More than half of eighth-graders fail to achieve expected levels of proficiency in reading, math and science on national tests.
The Wisconsin State Journal discusses the college prep program UW sponsors for middle (Madison students only) and high school minority students. Glaringly absent from the reporting is what are the criteria for getting accepted into this program. It sounds like a program open only to minority students, or is it for low-income students of color? […]
MMSD District Administration will be making a presenation on the MMSD Literacy Program Research tomorrow during the Performance and Achievement Committee meeting. I hope significant time is spent discussing a) results and next steps for MMSD’s Balanced Literacy approach to learning to read and write b) an analysis of alternative reading interventions and c) analysis […]
The following letter was submitted to the Madison papers today. Dear Editor: What joy I experience when I attend performances at the new Overture Center for the Performing Arts! I�ve been to a variety of free and paid performances, including the MSO and Kanopy Dance. Thank you Jerry Frautschi and Pleasant Rowland for your gift […]
On Friday, October 15, Madison School Board members received an e-mail from Superintendent Art Rainwater announcing that the district will withdraw from a federal program known as Reading First. In subsequent interviews with local newspapers, Rainwater estimated that the decision means forgoing approximately $2M in funds for materials to help students in the primary grades […]
by Ruth Robinson (President, Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted) and Susan Corwith (President, Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth)