schoolinfosystem.org
Benjamin Yount: Wisconsin schools saved about $40 million by not being open last spring, but a new report says no one is sure where the money went. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty looked at the data included in the coronavirus report issued by the state’s Department of Public Instruction last month. “The report […]
Jonathan Chait: In the dozen years since Barack Obama undertook the most dramatic education reform in half a century — prodding local governments to measure how they serve their poorest students and to create alternatives, especially charter schools, for those who lack decent neighborhood options — two unexpected things have happened. The first is that […]
Nader Issa and Stefano Esposito: About 40% of Chicago Public Schools teachers and staff who were expected to report to schools Monday for the first time during the pandemic didn’t show up for in-person work, officials said Tuesday, accusing the Chicago Teachers Union of pressuring its members to defy the district’s orders. In all, about […]
Perry Stein and Laura Meckler: Hours before the mayor was to make an announcement, she said she needed more time. The city spent the next five months trying to bring students and teachers back to classrooms. A combination of mismanagement by the mayor and her aides and intransigence from the District’s teachers union combined to […]
Matthew Cash: A recent study completed by Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty shows school districts across the state saw a dramatic decline in fall enrollment as educators navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Fall enrollment numbers collected in October shows districts saw an average of 2.67% decline in enrollment. For districts that started the school year […]
Kerry McDonald: In March, I published an article here about the world’s homeschooling moment, noting that hundreds of millions of students worldwide were suddenly displaced from their classrooms and learning at home due to the Covid-19 response. At its peak, that number reached nearly 1.3 billion children learning at home, with varying degrees of remote […]
Ben Bradley: A Chicago Teachers Union leader is facing criticism for vacationing in the Caribbean while at the same time claiming it’s unsafe for teachers to return to the classroom. Sarah Chambers is on the union’s executive board and is an area vice president. As recently as Thursday, she tweeted to rally special education teachers not […]
Jacob Siegel: For a year filled with fear and uncertainty, as plague collided with the final eruptions of the Trump era, the political lessons of 2020 are uncannily clear. Elite institutional authority is everywhere collapsing in a bonfire of self-immolation even as elite institutions become ever more powerful. What ties the impeachment drama that began […]
Lauren Fitzpatrick: One of the city’s oldest public high schools, once heavily Jewish, for decades home to a nearly all-Black student body, it boasts fiercely proud alumni and a reputation for powerhouse athletics. It’s named for the fourth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, widely regarded as the most influential leader of the […]
Scott Girard: I’m really glad to hear that. How has virtual learning gone for your two kids? I have a first grader and a fifth grader, as I think we talked about last time and virtual learning for my fifth grader was going extremely poorly. And we made a decision in November to pull him […]
Whitehouse.gov The prolonged deprivation of in-person learning opportunities has produced undeniably dire consequences for the children of this country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that school attendance is negatively correlated with a child’s risk of depression and various types of abuse. States have seen substantial declines in reports of child maltreatment […]
Josh Verges: New state guidance that will enable Minnesota’s youngest learners to head back to school next month is getting cheers from urban districts, jeers from rural schools and a mixed response from teachers. Within hours of Gov. Tim Walz’s announcement Wednesday that elementary schools soon can operate at full capacity, even as coronavirus case […]
Will Flanders & Ben DeGrow: In the spring, many families were willing to give schools the benefit of the doubt as they adjusted to distance-learning programs, but it looks like time has run out on that goodwill. Part of the frustration is tied to students’ learning losses in key subjects such as math. Even more significant, […]
Alan Borsuk: The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “slow-walking” as “acting in a deliberately slow manner” that delays or prevents progress. I looked it up because I was thinking about the Milwaukee Public Schools system. Hmmm. We could argue over whether the Milwaukee School Board and the MPS administration are deliberately acting slowly. I’m not good at […]
Alan Borsuk: As a second, less tangible factor, some of the charter schools get very good academic results. For example, Milwaukee Excellence Charter School, one of the schools receiving a reduced renewal Dec. 17, had the highest score of any Milwaukee school on the statewide school report card in 2018. In 2019, it had the second highest score in MPS. (This year, there were no report […]
Robbie Whelan: Superintendent Jonathan Cooper this summer helped write a fall reopening plan for his southwestern Ohio school district with a rule based on the state’s policy: Any student potentially exposed to Covid-19 in Mason City Schools had to quarantine for two weeks, no exceptions. This fall, he began rethinking it. A growing body of […]
Sarah & Ben Jedd: On March 15, when the Madison Metropolitan School District shuttered buildings and sent students home, Dane County had eight cases of COVID-19. On Dec. 17, when MMSD superintendent Carlton Jenkins hosted a forum via Zoom to discuss reopening our schools, the county had over 3,000 positive cases this month alone. Nevertheless, […]
Wow! NPR tonight. Teachers justifying why it’s better for schools to be closed. “Kids are resilient. Parents tell me their kids are falling behind but they have to understand they are falling behind in arbitrary developmental goals we’ve set”. ? — Victoria Fox (@drvictoriafox) December 23, 2020 Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public […]
Nic Querolo and Leslie Patton: One is thriving after switching from online public school to in-person private education. The other is struggling, stuck in her virtual classroom. The lives of these two girls, Ella Pierick and Afiya Harris, encapsulate the growing divide in U.S. education as more affluent parents flee public schools. In Connecticut, enrollment fell 3%. Colorado reported […]
Elizabeth Beyer: The Middleton-Cross Plains School Board voted unanimously Monday to return grades K-4 to in-person instruction with a blended learning model in February. The board will revisit a vote to bring back students in older grades during their Feb. 8 meeting after they’ve had the opportunity to observe virus mitigation measures in school buildings. […]
JD Tuccille: Insisting that “the push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny,” the Chicago Teachers Union is fighting plans to return children to the city’s public school classrooms. Not only is the union seeking an injunction to keep kids at home, but it says “all options are going to be on […]
Don’t miss @NBFCorp, @HFSCWisconsin, @SchoolChoiceWI, @SchoolChoiceNow, @WILawLiberty‘s School Choice Talent Show! Help us celebrate 2021’s National School Choice Week by joining our talent show contest. Submit before the end of the year. Learn more here: https://t.co/KTyhbNodHr pic.twitter.com/WBlMRXBewq — No Better Friend Corp. (@NBFCorp) December 17, 2020 Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to […]
Mackenzie Mays: California teachers unions are demanding that the Legislature maintain pandemic restrictions on school reopenings and have begun mobilizing against a Democratic bill introduced last week that could force schools to reopen in March. In separate letters to legislative leaders, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers urge lawmakers to avoid […]
Wall Street Journal: Teachers unions have pushed to shut down schools during the pandemic no matter the clear harm to children, just as they oppose charters and vouchers. Now comes a timely study suggesting school choice improves student mental health. Several studies have found that school choice reduces arrests and that private-school students experience less […]
For a research project 1.Which belief, currently deemed true by scientific consensus, is most important for teachers & faculty at schools of ed to know? 2.Which belief, currently deemed false by scientific consensus, is nevertheless often believed by Ts & faculty at schls of ed? — Daniel Willingham (@DTWillingham) December 15, 2020 2010: When A […]
Scott Girard: The biggest exception to the enrollment decline in the public school sector were districts with an established virtual charter school option, the study found. Those districts saw an enrollment increase of approximately 4.5%, the study found. “Districts that have these schools that have some experience with conducting virtual education was appealing to some […]
Nader Issa: Half of the jobs, which pay $15 an hour, include supervising students in classrooms where teachers are remote, monitoring social distancing and masking and conducting health screenings. Chicago Public Schools is looking to hire 2,000 new employees to take on pandemic-related duties and fill in gaps in staffing once schools return in-person in […]
Bill Minser, Regis Miller and more: I found last Sunday’s State Journal editorial, “Fauci sends a message to schools,” disingenuous and dangerous. Schools should have opened in September. Commentary. Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Molly Beck and […]
Erin Richards: Ruby Rodriguez remembers the days when English class meant walking to her desk, talking to friends and checking the board. Now class begins when her classmates’ names appear online. She sits alone at the dining room table, barefoot and petting the family dog. It’s her freshman year at St. Anthony High School, a […]
David Blaska: First get rid of the police, then figure out how to make schools safe. That’s Madison’s mad formula for its public schools, courtesy of Freedom Inc. and Progressive Dane (and its amen corner at The Capital Times). Parents, not so much. After booting the school resource police officers last Spring the board began […]
Joseph Da Costa: Madison school officials plan significant changes in reading and literacy instruction. District administrators presented the proposed changes to school board members at a recent Board of Education meeting and signaled a shift toward phonics and the science of reading. MMSD’s Chief of Elementary Schools, Carletta Stanford, acknowledged, “We know that what we’ve […]
Hannah Natanson: More evidence emerged this week that online school is taking its worst academic toll on Virginia’s most vulnerable students, as superintendents in the state — facing mounting pressure to reopen schools — took tentative steps toward in-person instruction. Loudoun County Public Schools went the furthest, welcoming back more than 7,300 elementary school students this […]
John Wisely: Three Catholic high schools are suing the state in federal court, saying Michigan’s most recent order banning in-person learning violates their First Amendment right to practice their faith. Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon on Monday extended by 12 days a previous order banning in-person learning at high schools, colleges […]
Hank Berrien: A group of Wisconsin parents, along with School Choice Wisconsin, is suing the city of Racine after the city closed its schools, defying a Wisconsin Supreme Court restraining order preventing the city from closing the schools. The sequence of events preceding the lawsuit included Dottie-Kay Bowersox, the City of Racine Public Health Administrator, […]
Wisconsin State Journal: The nation’s top infectious disease expert just urged schools to reopen. We hope school officials in Madison and across Wisconsin were listening — those who have kept most of their students at home for online learning during the pandemic. School officials should be ready to open for the second semester in late […]
Elizabeth Beyer: Under Freedom Inc.’s proposal the committee would have complete decision-making power over school safety and accountability policies within the district; oversee all district investigations of student, parent or family member complaints against school staff; and establish a process to protect students against retaliation after filing a complaint, among other measures. Freedom Inc. is […]
Karol Markowicz: “Why is my school closed, Mommy?” asks the sweet fictional child who has stopped going to school for no apparent reason. “I haaaaaaaaate Zoom,” screams the real child rolling on the floor, while his teacher repeatedly asks little Sally to mute herself and little Billy to put his shirt back on. In-person school […]
Gloria Reyes: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 1, 2020 Madison School Board President Gloria Reyes Will Not Seek Re-election Statement by Gloria Reyes I am announcing today that I will not seek re-election to the Madison School Board. This has been a difficult decision. I’ve made it after much consideration, consultation with my family, and as […]
Will Flanders: Flying under the radar amidst the continuing pandemic is the news that the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) finally released school-level spending data for Wisconsin’s public schools. Required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), DPI appears to have dragged its feet as long as possible before providing this information to families […]
Adam Rogan: The City of Racine is still banning schools from having students and teachers in their buildings within city limits through Jan. 15, despite a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision last week that put the local order closing schools on pause. The legal reason the city is citing for continuing to enforce school closures is […]
Evita Duffy: Right now in China, 195 million students K-12 are learning in-person in Chinese public schools. Meanwhile, millions of American public school students are learning in a failed remote system that can’t even keep track of thousands of students who haven’t shown up for class all year. In 2018, 15-year-olds in dozens of countries […]
Tide has turned on schools. Seems to be fairly widespread agreement they should be open and that harms caused from keeping them shuttered are grave. And yet… schools in CA have never opened, never gotten close. And there is no proposal or possible date for opening on the table. https://t.co/lPLaBJad8J — Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) November […]
Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, Wil Van Cleve, MD, MPH2; Frederick J. Zimmerman, PhD3: Question Based on the current understanding of the associations between school disruption and decreased educational attainment and between decreased educational attainment and lower life expectancy, is it possible to estimate the association between school closure during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and decreased life expectancy of publicly […]
Hannah Natanson, Laura Meckler: Sophia Sanchez, age 9 and stuck in perpetual Zoom school, is crying a lot lately. Her mother and sister rush in and ask what went wrong. Did the Internet go out again? Is her computer plugged in? Is the math too confusing? Sophia can’t really answer. She’s too upset, wondering whether she’ll […]
Ben Farrell, Lauren Henning and Anna Walters: Editor’s note: This story came about through a partnership between the Cap Times, Local Voices Network and a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism class. Students analyzed the Cap Times People’s Agenda and chose to report on non-police solutions for community issues, one of the topics readers identified as a priority. Specifically, the student […]
Hannah Natanson: A report on student grades from one of the nation’s largest school districts offers some of the first concrete evidence that online learning is forcing a striking drop in students’ academic performance, and that the most vulnerable students — children with disabilities and English-language learners — are suffering the most. Fairfax County Public […]
John Murawski: The president of the Lower Merion School Board on Philadelphia’s affluent Main Line declared to families: “We need to eradicate white supremacy and heteropatriarchy in all of our institutions.” In Maine, a coastal public school district where 3.7% of the 2,100 students are African American or Hispanic, the superintendent declared war on “the intentional barriers white people have built […]
November 22, 2020 update: Latest financial statements and Wegner CPA audit information: School Board Audit Points Financial Statements Final Report Communications Much more on Madison’s tax & spending practices, here.
Administration slides: 1) Call to order 2) Approval of minutes dated Nov. 5, 2020 3) Review Charge Statement/Purpose & Timeline 4) Update of responses to questions & comments 5) What we heard from last meeting? a) Successful Implementation of RJ Practices & MMSD- Critical Response Teams 6) Partnering with Law Enforcement- Flow and Guidance 7) […]
The Economist: NEW YORK CITY’S schools may be closing, but the pupils at Success Academies, a network of charter schools which has placed all of its 20,000 pupils in remote learning, will still be wearing their uniform (vivid, pumpkin-orange shirts with navy trousers) every day of the week. Unlike traditional public schools in the city, […]
Donovan Newkirk: After criticism from parents and other taxpayers, the Milwaukee Public School District will not be moving forward with its plan to incorporate the controversial Black Lives Matter at School curriculum district-wide this academic year. But some individual MPS schools will be implementing at least some aspects of the curriculum as BLM supporters around […]
From Dr. Anthony Fauci today: “Try as best as possible to keep the schools open…” @GovInslee #waleg @lauriejinkins2 https://t.co/zUmp12Cww3 — Beth Sigall (@btsigall) November 17, 2020 Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Molly Beck and Madeline Heim: which […]
Aaron Carroll: Cases have definitely been more common in school-age children this fall. But when schools do the right things, those infections are not transmitted in the classroom. They’re occurring, for the most part, when children go to parties, when they have sleepovers and when they’re playing sports inside and unmasked…. The playbook for keeping […]
Megan Kuhfeld: As the COVID-19 pandemic upended the 2019–2020 school year, education systems scrambled to meet the needs of students and families with little available data on how school closures may impact learning. In this study, we produced a series of projections of COVID-19-related learning loss based on (a) estimates from absenteeism literature and (b) […]
Frederick Hess: Since March, millions of students have been out of school. Nearly half of the nation’s 50 largest school districts haven’t yet reopened or are only now planning to do so. Hybrid reopening plans have been a start-and-stop, hit-and-miss endeavor. Given the mounting evidence that the public health risks of reopening schools are modest […]
https://www.reopenourschools.org. Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Molly Beck and Madeline Heim: which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection […]
Annysa Johnson: State Superintendent of Public Instruction Carolyn Stanford Taylor is seeking an additional $1.6 billion for education over the next two years, along with changes that would cushion districts as they weather the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Stanford Taylor’s proposed 2021-23 budget, announced this week, reflects many of the same priorities as her predecessor, […]
Joanne Jacobs: Remote learning isn’t working, especially for younger children, but “normal” schooling wasn’t working well either, writes Erika Christakis, an early childhood educator, in The Atlantic. She envisions an alternative — year-round “pandemic camp” — to focus on children’s needs for “exercise, outdoor time, conversation, play, even sleep.” Parents should demand “a broader and deeper curriculum with more […]
Christopher Campos and Caitlin Kearns: This paper evaluates the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program in Los Angeles, a school choice initiative that created small high school markets in some neighborhoods but left traditional attendance zone boundaries in place throughout the rest of the district. We leverage this introduction to study the impact of neighborhood school […]
Scott Girard: The largest measures were here in Madison, where voters approved a total $350 million investment in the district. That includes $33 million in operating funds phased in over four years and $317 million for capital projects, including renovations to the four comprehensive high schools and a new elementary school. Statewide, 30 of the […]
Amelia Nierenberg: In San Francisco, restaurants, movie theaters and museums are open at reduced capacity. The share of coronavirus tests that come back positive in the city has stayed low since a surge over the summer. But as some of San Francisco’s private and parochial schools have begun to reopen their doors, its public school […]
Jay Greene: There has been a flurry of research recently claiming to find compelling causal evidence that increasing school spending would significantly improve student outcomes and avoiding cuts in spending would prevent significant harm. This research has been embraced so quickly as settled fact that over 400 researchers and advocates signed a group letter citing […]
Samantha West: Jordan Meulemans’ weekday routine used to begin at 6:30 a.m., when she would wake up and get ready for school. But for the past month, the De Pere High School junior’s days have looked starkly different. Meulemans rolls out of bed around 7:30 a.m., puts on some sweats, wakes her little sister, eats breakfast and […]
Scott Girard: Better communication between 4-year-old kindergarten teachers and their 5-year-old kindergarten counterparts in the Madison Metropolitan School District could improve student outcomes in transitioning to kindergarten, a new report found. A Madison Education Partnership research brief released this month outlines some of the challenges facing teachers during student transitions from 4K to elementary school and offers […]
Vanessa Rancano: For as long as Connie LuVenia Williams can remember, letters have been giving her trouble. Sure, she learned the ABCs, but making sense of how these symbols we call letters combine to form the sounds that make up the English language – that part stumped her. And from what she remembers nobody taught […]
Chris Stewart: This past Sunday my 8 Black Hands crew did a show on the missing importance of school boards, and then this article pops up saying the National School Boards Association (NSBA) has launched a campaign called “Public School Transformation Now!” The goal, flimsy as ever, is to “bring equity issues front and center.” […]
Todd Richmond: new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that the state’s high school sports have not caused an increase in COVID-19 infections among athletes. The UW School of Medicine and Public Health released the study Thursday. Researchers led by Dr. Andrew Watson surveyed 207 schools that restarted fall sports in September, representing more […]
Ola Lisowski: Voters will consider nearly $1.2 billion in property tax increases in the November election, thanks to school district referenda. Taxpayers in 41 school districts across the state will consider a total of 51 questions on their ballots for projects ranging from brand new buildings, upgrades to existing facilities and permission to spend beyond […]
Despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results. 2017: West High Reading interventionist teacher’s remarks to the school board on madison’s disastrous reading results MMSD Budget Facts: from 2014-15 to 2020-21 [May, 2020] Property taxes up 37% from 2012 – 2021. MMSD Budget Facts: from […]
CBS2: Hundreds of teachers are taking a sick day for Monday, according to the West Ada School District, one day after the board voted in favor of a hybrid schedule. A spokeswoman for the district says out of 2,145 classroom teachers, 652 have taken a sick day for Monday. The sick calls leave approximately 500 […]
Howard Blume and Laura Newberry: As parents express widespread dissatisfaction with distance learning, two influential California teachers unions are pushing against growing momentum to reopen schools in many communities, saying that campuses are not yet safe enough amid the pandemic. Leaders with the California Teachers Assn., with 300,000 members, and United Teachers Los Angeles, representing […]
Today I issued a statement on the need for our School District to focus on reopening our public schools, not renaming them. To address inequities, we need to get our kids back in the classroom. pic.twitter.com/nHnauVZzFe — London Breed (@LondonBreed) October 16, 2020 Related: Frustrated Middleton-Cross Plains parent group calls (school board) recall effort a […]
Annysa Johnson, Samantha West and Alec Johnson: Enrollment in Wisconsin public schools fell by 3% this year, the largest dip in decades, and private schools that accept taxpayer-funded vouchers saw an increase, though not as much as last year. In all, according to new data released Thursday by the state Department of Public Instruction, public schools […]
Elizabeth Beyer: She said the curriculum offered to students was not intended to be delivered digitally and her children now have online meetings with their teachers for five hours each week compared to 30 hours of live teaching prior to the pandemic. “We need to give parents options so those who feel safe sending their […]
Zoe Kirsch: For Brooklyn parent Priscilla Santos, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Tuesday announcement that he was releasing his own plan for temporary New York City COVID-related school closures dispelled any lingering remnants of faith she had in political leadership after a bleak, confusing summer. Santos is the special education representative for her district’s Community […]
Despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results. 2017: West High Reading interventionist teacher’s remarks to the school board on madison’s disastrous reading results MMSD Budget Facts: from 2014-15 to 2020-21 [May, 2020] Property taxes up 37% from 2012 – 2021. MMSD Budget Facts: from […]
Elizabeth Beyer: Enrollment in the Madison School District has dropped by more than 1,000 students for the 2020-2021 school, the district said Friday. The decrease in enrollment is significant compared to the previous school year when the district lost only 33 students between 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. The drop in enrollment could spell trouble for district […]
Emily Oster: In early August, the first kids in America went back to school during the pandemic. Many of these openings happened in areas where cases were high or growing: in Georgia, Indiana, Florida. Parents, teachers, and scientists feared what might happen next. The New York Times reported that, in parts of Georgia, a school […]
Scott Girard: The budget vote this summer took place in a June 29 public meeting, and district spokesman Tim LeMonds pointed to a mention in the June 26 staff newsletter, which he called “the primary mechanism used for communicating to all staff.” In that newsletter, a “Budget Update” section on page two includes a mention […]
Anna North: America’s largest school district, New York City, brought some 300,000 students back for in-person learning on Tuesday, even as Covid-19 rates in the city began to tick up. Meanwhile, schools in Miami announced a return to fully in-person learning this month, after a disastrous rollout of online education earlier in the fall. Then […]
Joanne Jacobs: Florida reopened schools for in-person teaching in August. The feared coronavirus surge didn’t happen, reports a team of USA Today reporters. “The state’s positive case count among kids ages 5 to 17 declined through late September after a peak in July. More than half of Florida families returned their children to school in-person, while the rest chose remote […]
Chris Rickert: Amid a national conversation on policing and race, Dane County school districts are taking a closer look at the work officers do in their schools but so far have not gone as far as the Madison School District and removed them entirely. Of the 16 districts completely or predominantly within the county, 12 […]
Statesman: What Biden says about school choice The Biden campaign said he’s firmly against using public money for private K-12 schools. Here’s the full statement we received: “Joe Biden opposes the Trump/(Betsy) DeVos conception of ‘school choice,’ which is private school vouchers that would destroy our public schools. He’s also against for-profit and low-performing charter […]
Kelly Meyerhofer: Brenda Gonzalez, director of community relations at UW-Madison who spoke during the County Board meeting in opposition of the resolution, said testing and protocol put in place should keep the number of positive cases on campus low. She said Public Health Madison and Dane County is monitoring possible transmission of cases from campus […]
Dan McGowan: When Mayor Jorge Elorza raised concerns last year about a charter school organization’s expansion plan in Providence, he had a very practical reason. He was in charge of a school system with 24,000 students, and he feared that the district would not be able to absorb the financial hit if too many students […]
Asra Q. Nomani and Glenn Miller: This week, a group of about 200 students, parents, alumni, and concerned local residents flooded the sidewalk in front of America’s number-one-ranked public high school—Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. This was no back-to-school event. It was a rally to save the soul of […]
Annysa Johnson: The news conference, which also featured Madison Teachers Inc. President Andy Waity, was part of a national day of action by teachers unions across the country, calling for safe working conditions in schools during the pandemic. The renewed push to bar in-person instruction comes as the number of COVID-19 cases has spiked in the […]
Jesse Paul and Erica Breunlin: Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday pleaded with Colorado parents to enroll their children in school, saying that districts have seen declines in the number of kids signed up for classes during the coronavirus crisis, especially among younger grades. “Your kid will return to school someday,” Polis said at a coronavirus […]
Joy Pullmann President Trump is bringing some attention to the connections between this summer’s riots, the 63 percent of young Americans who believe America is racist, and the disaster that is civics and history instruction in U.S. public schools. He recently announced a federal commission to counter the saturation of anti-American ideology in American education […]
WILL: WILL sued MMSD for violating parental rights with gender identity policy The News: Dane County Circuit Court Judge Frank Remington issued an injunction last week in a WILL parental rights lawsuit that forbids Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) employees from lying or deceiving parents about the gender identity that their child may have adopted at school. The lawsuit […]
Alec Johnson: Nature Hill Intermediate School, Silver Lake Intermediate School and Oconomowoc High School students will have class in person five days a week starting Sept. 28 after an Oconomowoc School Board vote on Sept. 23. The board voted, 4-2, in a special meeting to have the intermediate school and high school students return to […]
Erin Richards: This year, after a lot of research about COVID-19 and schooling options and after the district announced it was starting virtually, Ludtke withdrew the girls and enrolled them in a state college that offers online classes. They’re earning both college and high school credit in English and math. (Because the girls are 12 and 13, the college administrators asked […]
Foundation for Madison Public Schools [Board] recently spent funds on a pro 2020 Tax & Spending increase referendum Facebook advertising campaign. The advertisement. The advertisement includes a reference to https://yes2investmsn.org The Foundation for Madison Public Schools lists $9,011,063 in assets at the end of 2019 (!) via FMPS’ IRS Tax Form 990 “Return of Organization […]
Kevin Williamson: This represents a truly impressive display of political incompetence on the part of Black Lives Matter and its allies. If you came to the American public with an argument that cities such as Louisville and Philadelphia are poorly governed, that this poor governance imposes especially terrible costs on African Americans, that the municipal […]
Elizabeth Beyer: Twenty-five Madison high school seniors have been named semifinalists for the 2021 National Merit Scholarships. The students join about 16,000 other high school seniors across the country that were named this month as semifinalists for the prestigious scholarship. About 15,000 of semifinalists are named finalists, and about 7,600 of the finalists go on […]
Chris Rickert: An 18-year-old Madison man out on bail was charged with reckless homicide Thursday in a crash last week on the West Side that killed a 22-year-old former Madison School Board member and National Merit Scholar. Maurice M. Chandler is also charged with driving with a revoked license, reckless injury and eight bail-jumping violations […]
Joanne Jacobs: Reopening schools isn’t spreading coronavirus, say public health experts. Early evidence “suggests that opening schools may not be as risky as many have feared,” report Laura Meckler and Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post. While students and teachers have become sick with coronavirus, there’s “little evidence that the virus is spreading inside buildings.” […]
Will Flanders: Last week, a Jefferson County Circuit Judge ruled that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) violated the law when it came to releasing data on the state’s private school choice programs. Along with Jim Bender of School Choice Wisconsin and Matt Kittle of Empower Wisconsin, I served as a plaintiff in this case brought […]
Meghan Mangrum: Tennessee students have likely experienced significant learning loss, especially in reading and math, this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Preliminary data released Wednesday by the Tennessee Department of Education projects an estimated 50% decrease in proficiency rates in 3rd grade reading and a projected 65% decrease in proficiency in math. “The department has […]
John Tierney: If you’re a public-minded student or teacher committed to reducing the death toll from Covid-19, what is the morally correct way to behave? According to the epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, you should do just about the opposite of what’s being preached by college presidents, teachers’ unions, political leaders, and the scientific and media establishment. […]