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Madison School Board approves a substantial tax and spending hike fall 2020 referendum
If approved, the district would be able to exceed the revenue limit by $6 million in 2020-21, an additional $8 million in 2021-22, another $9 million in 2022-23 and finally another $10 million in 2023-24. The referendum would allow the district to surpass the revenue limit by that total of $33 million in perpetuity thereafter.
Property owners would see an increase of $59 per $100,000 of value in year one, according to the district’s presentation. By 2023-24, the cumulative increase in the operating referendum as well as an increasing mill rate impact of the capital referendum would bring that to $151 per $100,000 of property value above the current taxes that go to the school district.
Board members and staff said the pandemic has only added to the need for additional funding in the fall and in future years, with the long-term effects still largely unknown. Board member Cris Carusi clarified that they can amend the amount of the operating referendum until Aug. 17, in case they find out there are large cuts from the state.
The $33 million operating referendum would help the district offset any coronavirus-related state budget cuts this year and work on some of its Strategic Equity Projects.
While Gov. Tony Evers has said he hopes a Budget Repair Bill isn’t necessary amid predicted state revenue losses, the School Board voted to hedge against that possibility with further cuts in its preliminary budget approved last month. That meant removing most of the previously planned salary increase for staff.
Belmore added the “community’s appetite for referenda hasn’t lessened in the wake of the health crisis we’re going through, but rather we’re learning that our public schools and the safety and academic achievement of our kids is more important now than ever.”
If both referendums pass — and the board uses its entire spending authority under state law — the owner of an average-value Madison home, now estimated at $311,500, could expect to pay $480 more in property taxes a year by 2023-24.
For more than a year, the district has crafted plans on how to redesign the high schools, solicited feedback on the highest needs at the decades-old buildings — the newest of which was built in 1965 — and hired developer J.H. Findorff and Son as the construction manager.
Fall 2020 Administration Referendum slides. (
(Note: “Madison spends just 1% of its budget on maintenance while Milwaukee, with far more students, spends 2%” – Madison’s CFO at a fall 2019 referendum presentation.)
MMSD Budget Facts: from 2014-15 to 2020-21 [July, 2020]
Property taxes up 37% from 2012 – 2021.
MMSD Budget Facts: from 2014-15 to 2020-21
1. 4K-12 enrollment: -1.6% (decrease) from 2014-15 to projected 2020-21
2. Total district staffing FTE: -2.9% (decrease) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21
3. Total expenditures (excluding construction fund): +15.9% +17.0% (increase) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21
4. Total expenditures per pupil: +17.8% +19.0%(increase) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21
5. CPI change: +10.0% (increase) from January 2014 to January 2020
6. Bond rating (Moody’s): two downgrades (from Aaa to Aa2) from 2014 to 2020
Sources:
1. DPI WISEdash for 2014-15 enrollment; district budget book for projected 2020-21 enrollment
2. & 3.: District budget books
5. Bureau of Labor Statistics (https://www.bls.gov/data/)
6. Moody’s (https://www.moodys.com/)
– via a kind reader (July 9, 2020 update).
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
“We know best”: Madison School Board approves superintendent contract before it becomes public
The Madison School Board approved a contract Monday to hire a Minnesota school administrator as the next superintendent before releasing details of the agreement to the public.
That’s a change from how the board handled the hiring process for its first choice for superintendent — who later backed out of the job — in February. This time, the contract with Carlton Jenkins, superintendent of Robbinsdale Area Schools in suburban Minneapolis, was not made public before the board unanimously approved the agreement during a special board meeting.
Jenkins, who is in his fifth year leading the Robbinsdale schools, will make $272,000 annually. The two-year contract will automatically renew for a third year unless the board chooses otherwise. Jenkins, 54, will be Madison’s first Black superintendent. He first day on the job will be Aug. 4.
District spokesman Tim LeMonds said in an email Jenkins is “not an official employee of the district until the contract is voted on,” adding Madison is “one of very few districts that publicly posts contracts.”
LeMonds also said the district is “not required to make a contract public until it is ratified by the board.” The contract was emailed to reporters soon after the vote.
A contract with Seguin, Texas, superintendent Matthew Gutierrez was publicly available before the board voted on Feb. 3 to approve that agreement.
The pay is more than what was agreed upon with Matthew Gutierrez, who was hired in an earlier search this year but rescinded his acceptance amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Gutierrez would have been paid $250,000.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
7.13.2020 Madison School District Fall Referendum Presentation Deck
Proposed Question 1:
Shall the Madison Metropolitan School District, Dane County, Wisconsin be authorized to exceed the revenue limit specified in Section 121.91, Wisconsin Statutes, by $6,000,000 for 2020-2021 school year; by an additional $8,000,000 (for a total $14,000,000) for 2021-2022 school year; by an additional $9,000,000 (for a total of $23,000,000) for the 2022-23 school year; and by an additional $10,000,000 (for a total of $33,000,000) for the 2023-2024 school year and thereafter, for recurring purposes consisting of operational and maintenance expenses?
“Unknown revenues from the state…
Now more than ever public education funding is at risk and local control will matter.”Question 2:
Shall the Madison Metropolitan School District, Dane County, Wisconsin be authorized to issue pursuant to Chapter 67 of the Wisconsin Statutes, general obligation bonds in an amount not to exceed $317,000,000 for the public purpose of paying the cost of a school building and facility improvement project consisting of: renovations and additions at all four high schools, including safety and security improvements, plumbing/heating and cooling, science labs and classrooms, athletic, theatre, and environmental sustainability improvements; land acquisition for and construction of a new elementary school located near Rimrock Road to relocate an existing elementary school; remodeling the district owned Hoyt School to relocate Capital High; and acquisition of furnishings fixtures and equipment?
The presentation deck failed to include:
1. Total tax & spending changes over time.
From a kind reader, posted at mmsdbudget:
MMSD Budget Facts: from 2014-15 to 2020-21 [July, 2020]
Property taxes up 37% from 2012 – 2021.
1. 4K-12 enrollment: -1.6% (decrease) from 2014-15 to projected 2020-212. Total district staffing FTE: -2.9% (decrease) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21
3. Total expenditures (excluding construction fund): +15.9% +17.0% (increase) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21
4. Total expenditures per pupil: +17.8% +19.0%(increase) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21
5. CPI change: +10.0% (increase) from January 2014 to January 2020
6. Bond rating (Moody’s): two downgrades (from Aaa to Aa2) from 2014 to 2020
Sources:
1. DPI WISEdash for 2014-15 enrollment; district budget book for projected 2020-21 enrollment
2. & 3.: District budget books
5. Bureau of Labor Statistics (https://www.bls.gov/data/)
6. Moody’s (https://www.moodys.com/)
– via a kind reader (July 9, 2020 update).
2. A comparison of Madison’s maintenance spending vs other taxpayer supported school districts.
“Madison spends just 1% of its budget on maintenance while Milwaukee, with far more students, spends 2%” – Madison’s CFO at a fall 2019 referendum presentation.
3. Enrollment forecasts.
4. Achievement and spending information; “bang for the buck”.
5. Substantive property tax burden between school districts. The included mill rate comparison is one part of the equation.
Changes in assessed value, redistributed state and federal taxpayer fund changes and spending growth data have gone missing.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Carlton Jenkins is named Madison’s next K-12 Superintendent
Carlton Jenkins said moving to work in the Madison Metropolitan School District would be like “going home.”
One of two finalists to become the district’s next superintendent, Jenkins was an associate principal at Memorial High School in 1993 and earned his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Throughout the day Tuesday, the Robbinsdale School District superintendent spoke with students and staff via video, interviewed with the School Board and participated in a community Q and A session on Facebook Live.
“You will have a superintendent, if you select me, that comes here unapologetically knowing and loving Madison,” Jenkins said. “I am a Badger through and through.”
The School Board announced Jenkins and Oak Park Elementary School District 97 superintendent Carol Kelley as finalists last Thursday. After both interview this week, the board will deliberate in closed session Thursday.
Those who have thoughts on the choice can submit comments on the district’s website by 11 a.m. Thursday. To leave comments on Jenkins, visit mmsd.org/jenkins. Kelley’s community Q and A will be 7:15 p.m. Wednesday night.
The district’s timeline for a hire outlines a potential August start date.
Carlton Jenkins will become the next superintendent of the Madison School District, returning to the city where he started his administrative career in education more than 25 years ago.
The Madison School Board announced Friday it chose Jenkins, superintendent of Robbinsdale Area Schools in suburban Minneapolis, as the permanent leader of the Madison School District. He will be the first Black superintendent of Madison.
He starts the job Aug. 4.
In a second search to fill the superintendent vacancy after the initial pick fell through this spring, the board opted to go with Jenkins, 54, over the other finalist Carol Kelley, a superintendent of the Oak Park Elementary School District 97 in Illinois.
“I speak for everyone on the Board when I say that we are very excited to share this news with our community,” Board President Gloria Reyes said in a statement.
Jenkins received a Ph.D. in educational leadership and policy analysis from UW-Madison in 2009 and a master’s degree in educational administration from the university in 1993.
Related:
2013 – 2019: Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
UW-Madison professor sells plywood to students
The frightening thing about UW-Madison professor Walter C. Stern’s column last Sunday, “To move ‘Forward,’ we must confront troubled past,” is not how he tortures history to fit his ideology. It’s that he teaches his identity politics to your children’s teachers and — one suspects — many of the late-night visitors to State Street and Capitol Square this long hot summer.
Stern justifies the toppling of Wisconsin’s iconic “Forward” statue because, “while the statue and the state motto it embodies represent progress, their vision of progress does not extend to all.”
Does the professor understand that forward is a direction, not a final destination. That progress is not perfection?
“I use ‘Forward’ in my UW-Madison classes,” he writes, “to help students grasp how celebrations of conquest and white male domination became embedded within the daily fabric of American life.”
Here we thought “Forward” represented a strong woman. No wonder UW-Madison students want to tear down Abraham Lincoln (a white male). Who replaces Old Abe? Al Sharpton?
Tenured professors such as Stern supply the intellectual apologia for the tear down of society. They sell plywood. Menards only stocks it. Tommy Thompson, you’ve got your work cut out for you as interim president of the University of Wisconsin System.
Madison School Board Drops attempt at Changing Teacher Seniority Requirement for Layoffs
The Madison School Board will not discuss controversial changes proposed to the Employee Handbook Monday night as planned.
Board president Gloria Reyes announced in a press release sent by Madison Metropolitan School District spokesperson Tim LeMonds Monday afternoon that the item had been removed from the agenda and would be discussed at a special meeting at a later date.
“This change in the agenda is to provide additional direction and allow for more discussion and collaboration with stakeholders prior to any board discussion and subsequent action on employee handbook changes,” the statement reads.
The changes included a few items that Madison Teachers Inc. opposed. The union had been organizing its membership to speak Monday night before the meeting or send emails to board members opposing changes to layoff rules, specifically.
District administration had recommended the changes, which would shift the criteria for layoffs or shifting surplus staff among schools from seniority to a series of performance measurements like Educator Effectiveness evaluations, cultural competence and experience, among other things.
The Madison School Board president hit pause on proposed employee handbook changes scheduled for a Monday evening vote that would have handed Madison School District more control in laying off staff and expediting the termination process.
The district’s teachers union had pushed back against the proposal and the way in which it came about, saying administrators were engaging in a “divide and conquer” strategy during a time of crisis that would destroy a decades-long working relationship with Madison Teachers Inc. and the thousands of employees it represents.
District administrators had proposed eliminating seniority as the sole criteria to lay off employees or move individuals to different schools. Instead, the chief of schools would have selected employees for layoffs in consultation with principals.
Officials also requested allowing for 30-day layoff notices instead of the annual May 15 layoff notices.
Interim Superintendent Jane Belmore said in materials made public last week that the changes would help the district diversify its workforce and provide more financial flexibility at a time when it is bracing for coronavirus-related budget cuts.
Raises, officers both out as Madison School Board OKs 2020-21 budget — but COVID-19 may cause changes
The district said total compensation has exceeded the rate of inflation for the last seven years — something it said has helped recruit and retain the best and brightest teachers.
But the board directed officials to pause a proposed 1% increase to base wages and freeze part of a salary schedule that rewards staff the longer they work in the district.
Those raises could eventually be incorporated back into the district’s budget approved in the fall, depending on how the state budget shakes out.
Mirilli said she thinks Gov. Tony Evers will prioritize education in his budget given that he is a former educator. She was optimistic that the raises could be added back in, but said the board needs to be cautious because there’s so much uncertainty.
“This is not our final decision around this,” Mirilli said. “This is a placeholder based on what we know currently.”
Board members Carusi and Nicki Vander Meulen both voted against the preliminary budget. Carusi said she thinks the district’s financial situation “won’t be as dire” as predicted. Vander Meulen said she could not support taking away any money from teachers, even on a preliminary basis.
Recent Madison School District tax & spending history:
1. 4K-12 enrollment: -1.6% (decrease) from 2014-15 to projected 2020-21
2. Total district staffing FTE: -2.9% (decrease) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21
3. Total expenditures (excluding construction fund): +17.0% (increase) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21
4. Total expenditures per pupil: +19.0% (increase) from 2014-15 to proposed 2020-21
5. CPI change: +10.0% (increase) from January 2014 to January 2020
6. Bond rating (Moody’s): two downgrades (from Aaa to Aa2) from 2014 to 2020.
Madison School Board to vote on Police Presence, layoffs and budget
If the vote goes as expected, the 2020-21 school year will be the first in more than two decades without a police officer stationed in each of the district’s comprehensive high schools.
Employee Handbook changes
Madison Teachers Inc. is organizing opposition to a set of proposed Employee Handbook changes that would change the rules around layoffs and surplus staff.
District administrators have asked the board to approve language that would eliminate seniority as the mechanism for layoffs and forced moves to other sites, instead using other to-be-determined standards evaluating performance. The changes would also allow for 30-day notice of layoffs instead of the annual May 15 layoff notices.
With the district considering a November operations referendum and the state still uncertain on its revenue losses from the pandemic, MMSD chief financial officer Kelly Ruppel told the board earlier this month she’s trying to create as much flexibility as possible for the months ahead.
That included an $8 million cut from last year already. Earlier this month board members agreed that cutting an additional $8.4 million to protect against the possibility of state cuts was a good idea. Doing so meant cutting the planned base wage increase for staff.
Ruppel said that means hitting pause on “any new spending, in order to maintain the most flexibility until we know more.”
The other option she offered to board members was cutting up to 92 staff positions. If the referendum is on the ballot and approved or if state cuts don’t happen, the district could add wage increases back in mid-year. Hiring for eliminated positions would be a bigger challenge.
2011: A majority of the taxpayer supported Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
2005: Gangs & School Violence audio / video.
Commentary on Two 2020 taxpayer supported Madison School District Superintendent Candidates
Madison School Board president Gloria Reyes said in the release the district is “very fortunate to have an impressive pool of highly qualified candidates participate in this process.”
“With a focus on how candidates aligned with the Leadership Profile, the Board was able to select two phenomenal finalists, both with deep roots in education and instruction, and today we are excited to introduce them to our community,” Reyes said.
MMSD had 26,842 students in the 2019-20 school year, with demographics of 41.7% white, 22.3% Hispanic, 17.8% Black, 8.5% Asian, 9.3% Two or more and less than 1% each of Pacific Isle and American Indian, according to state data.
In its earlier search, the district had three finalists. In addition to Gutierrez, Georgia education official Eric Thomas and College of Saint Rose professor Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard also visited the district for an interview and public Q and A. Consultant BWP and Associates conducted both searches.
Jane Belmore has served as the interim superintendent since last August, when Jennifer Cheatham left for a position at Harvard after six years in MMSD
The finalists, Carol Kelley and Carlton Jenkins, will proceed with interviews next week.
Jenkins is in his fifth year as superintendent of the Robbinsdale School District in New Hope, Minnesota. He’s held educational leadership positions — including chief academic officer, principal, assistant principal and health teacher — in Michigan, Ohio, Beloit and Madison, and received his PhD from UW-Madison.
Kelley, an educator with 25 years of experience, is also in her fifth year as superintendent of Oak Park Elementary School District 97 in Illinois, the district said in an announcement. She also served for three years as superintendent of Branch Township School District in New Jersey and has a background as an elementary and middle school principal and a classroom teacher.
In these challenging times, our local businesses need your support. Find out how to get food, goods, services and more from those remaining open.
Kelley holds a doctorate of education from the University of Pennsylvania, the district said.
In addition to the next round of interviews, Jenkins and Kelley will participate in online engagement sessions with district staff and students during a “Virtual Day in the District.” The sessions will include an opportunity to ask questions of the candidates and provide feedback.
Notes and links on the 2020 Superintendent pageant, round 2.
2011: A majority of the taxpayer supported Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
2005: Gangs & School Violence audio / video.
2018 committee report could help guide upcoming Madison school resource officer decisions
Most members who spoke with the Cap Times said they favored removing officers, but didn’t think doing so immediately would solve the problem at the heart of the issue: feeling safe at school.
And some of the committee members wonder what happened to their months of work and why Reyes is calling for another subcommittee to investigate how to transition to having no SROs in schools. Under the contract with the Madison Police Department, a decision needs to be made by Sept. 15 to be effective June 2021.
“I just hope that the work that the ERO Ad Hoc did is not completely disregarded,” said former School Board member Anna Moffit. “People took a lot of time to put that report together and we did spend a lot of time in our schools talking to staff, talking to students, looking at research.
“I would hate to see a new committee be created and doing the same thing over again.”
2011: A majority of the taxpayer supported Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
2005: Gangs & School Violence audio / video.
Madison School Board will vote on police contract Monday
The Madison School Board will vote Monday on continuing or ending early its contract with the Madison Police Department to have officers stationed in its four comprehensive high schools.
Based on public statements from board members this spring and previous votes, it’s likely the board will vote to end the contract early, though contractual language won’t allow it to take effect until June 2021.
Board president Gloria Reyes announced the planned vote in a news release Wednesday afternoon. The board will meet in a special session at 4 p.m.
“The safety and wellbeing of every student that walks through our doors each day is a tremendous responsibility,” Reyes said in a statement. “As leaders in education, we recognize that now is the time to intensify our commitment to dismantling systemic racism by addressing inequities that only serve as mechanisms of division, and this decision is a significant step.”
Thomas Sowell’s book “Charter Schools and Their Enemies” is scheduled to be available June 30.
2011: A majority of the taxpayer supported Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Madison High school freshman wants cops in schools
In a previous post, we reproduced some of the chatter from NextDoor social media on Cops in Madison WI four public high schools — the issue that can never be settled, apparently. The thread is exploding with content running six to one or better in favor of keeping the police. Even more lopsided is the support for school resource officers from parents of students. Here is one of those, from Bonnie of Midvale Heights:
This is my daughter’s experience, in her words, at an MMSD High School (and why I care strongly about this):
I am a freshman at Memorial High School, and although I cannot speak for all experiences with SRO’s in our district, I thought I would share a few scenarios in which I have seen their involvement.
In October, graffiti was discovered in the bathroom at our high school. It included references to the Columbine shooting and other depicted images of gun violence. When later in the day pictures of this graffiti were shared on social media, people became afraid that what the school termed simply as “graffiti” may be more along the lines of a threat. The student was arrested on account of “a tentative disorderly conduct charge.” MMSD sent out an understated email. No added security in place. No increased police presence. No lockdown or additional precautions set in place. No news story. However, despite taking no further safety precautions, students were more at ease knowing there was an armed officer in the school, with extensive prior knowledge of the school and relationships with students and faculty should it have turned into more than “graffiti.”
That same day, one of my close friends was threatened with a picture of a gun. Teachers were informed, and the SRO was notified in the event that the situation escalated.
The following day, another one of my friends received texts from an unknown number that included gun violence threats. She went to the SRO at our school, and using the police they were able to trace the number. School counselors and psychologists were also used in order to mediate between the two students.
In November, two stolen cars were abandoned in the Jefferson parking lot. Although not all issues begin within the school, incidents often take place on school property. The SRO’s are needed to not only deal with problems within the school, but also to protect students from external threats.
In December there was a fight (not on school grounds) that resulted in additional police involvement at the school. Although the SRO and other faculty members are able to handle many situations, other police are very much needed. Removing the SRO’s from MMSD high schools would only increase the need for police presence, including those without prior experience with the school.
Neighbors support cops in schools
Analysis: Police Unions Stonewall All Attempts at Reform. So Do Teachers Unions. Is That Why They’ve Been So Silent?
The Center for Public Integrity reports that police contracts have “arbitration clauses that often force police departments to rehire fired misbehaving cops” and that cop unions “have successfully lobbied for state laws granting police officers far more job security than the average U.S. worker.”
A former attorney for the Service Employees International Union penned an editorial in USA Today explaining that police contracts often have provisions to expunge disciplinary records after a certain amount of time.
“Even in cases where an officer is fired for misconduct, the agreement requires an appeals process that frequently leads to reinstatement, especially if the investigating agency has committed procedural errors,” he wrote.
“The law enforcement community — and especially its unions’ — first response, when one of its officers is caught red-handed, is to circle the wagons, vilify the victim or survivor, and bat away any criticism or dissent as virtual sedition,” wrote Kim Kelly in The New Republic.
All these points should be familiar to union observers, and especially those writers expressing outrage these past few weeks. Not only have police unions been operating this way for a long time, but you could take any of the above quotes and apply them to teachers unions without hesitation.
This may help explain why other unions have been noticeably silent when the subject of police unions is broached. The Center for Public Integrity approached the leaders of 10 major unions and labor groups for comment on its story. None were willing to talk about police unions.
The backlash over police brutality is causing school districts to rethink their employment of sworn police, called school resource officers (SROs). These officers are usually contracted with the local police department, but in some cases they are school district employees, represented by the teachers union. Both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers represent thousands of school security personnel, including SROs.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
In rural areas, teachers adjust to COVID-19 as students drive 30 miles to access the internet
Though Seppa can gather his students together on a video conference, they can’t all play together because audio transmission over the internet is difficult to sync up via services like Zoom.
What’s more, one in six of his students don’t have access to reliable internet at home, he said. He added that infrastructure, not cost, is the barrier to high-speed internet for most of his students — something that is commonplace in rural Wisconsin.
In 2019, roughly 486,000 Wisconsinites did not have broadband access, according to a Federal Communications Commission report. The FCC defines broadband as an internet connection with 25 megabit per second download speeds and three megabit per second upload speeds.
Taxpayers have spent billions subsidizing the legacy telecommunication companies, yet…
What is the place for African Americans in the ‘new’ Madison?
Blacks for Political and Social Action of Dane County, Inc.:
In the midst of these challenges, the Madison Metropolitan School District heard its superintendent-designee, Matthew Gutiérrez, was rescinding his acceptance of the position to remain as superintendent of the Seguin, Texas school district. This lack of a permanent superintendent can have an incredibly negative impact on African American students. The initiative known as “Black Excellence” began under the leadership of former superintendent Jennifer Cheatham. Cheatham has been gone for almost a year. Nothing about the current leadership suggests that Black Excellence is a district priority. African American children in Wisconsin experience the widest achievement disparities in the nation in reading and mathematics. Our eighth graders are performing 47 points below their White counterparts in mathematics. Our fourth graders are performing 39 points below their White counterparts in reading. Where is the collective outrage over these disparities? Who on the current school board is demanding improvement?
The racial problems of MMSD run long and deep: Issues of achievement, disproportionate assignment to special education, lack of access to honors and advanced placement classes, disproportionate levels of suspensions and expulsions, and disproportionate graduation rates (59% Black vs. 88% White). In the midst of this there is an inverse relationship between the percentage of teachers of color and that of students. Eighty-eight percent of the teachers are White in a district with a student population that is 43% White. And, we have had repeated instances of White teachers using racial epithets and other disrespect toward Black students and their parents (e.g. a White teacher mistakenly sent a text to a Black parent about how the parent and her child were so dumb).
African Americans in Madison have been more than patient when it comes to improving their status — education, employment, housing, and every other measure of health and well-being. There have been over 40 years of reports, task forces and initiatives. Post-pandemic Madison will be a “new” Madison. We have learned a lot in the midst of crisis. We know that far too many of our community members are one paycheck away from poverty — loss of housing, food, health care, childcare, schooling, etc. What is the place for African Americans in this new Madison?
Related, Madison K-12 experiments:
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
Commentary on Madison’s planned 2020 tax and spending increase referendum
In the midst of economic collapse, the Madison School Board is likely to decide in June or July whether to ask taxpayers for additional funds through November referenda.
But most board members stated their support for putting both questions on the ballot during a discussion Monday night. Each of the seven board members spoke of their continued support for the questions, though some asked to see more of the economic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic before voting.
“We definitely need it,” board president Gloria Reyes said. “It’s just, given the economic instability and what this does to our taxpayers … I think we have to also be responsible and figuring out, is this the best route for our taxpayers right now given people losing jobs?”
Board member Savion Castro said the pandemic, “which is already exacerbating so many disparities across the board,” has shown “now is not the time to cut back our investment into public education for our students and our teachers.”
“Going into March there was a sense that this was really needed,” Castro said. “After COVID, it’s just underscored even more how badly our public schools need this investment from our community and I think we have a responsibility to be honest about that need.”
Before the pandemic, the board was planning to approve the questions for the November ballot with a March vote. Two weeks before that meeting, schools closed across the state of Wisconsin by order of the governor and public health officials.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Madison K-12 Spending up 19% from 2014-2020
Notes, links and commentary on Madison’s planned 2020 tax and spending increase referendum plans.
Meanwhile, the City of Madison is planning furloughs…
Madison School District behavior plan updates would push for more alternatives to suspension
After a larger overhaul a year ago, proposed updates to the Madison Metropolitan School District’s Behavior Education Plan for this fall would focus on “tweaks” to language and creating more alternatives to suspensions.
The updates, presented to the School Board Monday night at its Instruction Work Group meeting, would add new language related to drugs, physical contact and inappropriate language.
“This is a narrow proposal that we have in front of you,” said MMSD coordinator of progressive discipline Bryn Martyna. “We also want to make sure that the written policy is still up to date and current with what the board wants and what the board intended when you all passed the last version of it.”
The smaller-scale changes are a continuation of the annual updating process. The BEP outlines various behaviors and the responses, which vary from level 1 — classroom managed, not recorded in Infinite Campus — to level 5 — long-term removal from school, including potential expulsion.
The plan has been controversial since it was created in 2014 under former Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham. Some blame the BEP for a lack of discipline among students, and others say they support the plan’s ideals but question whether the district has done enough to help teachers implement it.
The latest proposal, which the board is expected to vote on at its May 18 meeting, would add using an electronic smoking device to the list of behaviors for which the district offers alternatives to suspension like restorative circles. The BEP lists other specific behaviors that schools are required or encouraged to develop alternatives to suspension for, but the update would add language encouraging such alternatives to be explored for “any other behaviors” that are not specifically listed.
Much more on the Madison School District’s behavior education plan, here.
2005: Gangs and School Violence Forum: audio and video:
In lieu of celebration, Greater Madison Writing Project shifts online for 10th anniversary
The Greater Madison Writing Project was set to celebrate its 10-year anniversary on March 21.
Ten days before that, the University of Wisconsin-Madison closed most of its facilities and social distancing practices went into effect amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, forcing GMWP to cancel its celebration and shift its work with teachers and students online.
“It’s not the 10-year anniversary that we expected, but it’s one that makes me really confident that whatever comes next, we have strong roots and strong branches,” said Bryn Orum, an outreach specialist for GMWP.
The program, housed on UW-Madison’s campus, is part of the National Writing Project and offers writing workshops to teachers and students around the Madison area. While it initially became a site in the 1980s, it closed up shop in the mid-1990s.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and Commentary on Madison’s Planned 2020-2021 K-12 Budget
The $476.1 million proposed spending package would increase property taxes by $46 for the owner of an average-value home in the district, now estimated at $311,500.
Faced with an $8 million shortfall at the beginning of crafting the 2020-21 budget, district officials propose cutting nearly 50 staff positions and doubling the share employees pay for health care premiums.
The total budget, which includes payments on debt service, capital maintenance and community programs, would slightly decrease from current-year spending, but the property tax levy would rise 2.9% to $339.5 million. The district’s portion of property taxes on an average-value home is estimated at $3,386 next year, or a 1.4% increase, in the preliminary budget.
Operating expenses — which include costs such as teachers’ salaries and classroom instruction — make up $432 million of the budget. The operating budget would decrease 0.22% from current spending levels.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Madison School District prepping for multiple fall scenarios, including online-only learning
Students in the Madison School District may not return to their schoolroom desks in the fall.
That’s one of several scenarios district officials are preparing for in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which led Gov. Tony Evers to shutter schools through the end of the current school year.
Among the possibilities for fall are continuing an entirely online operation, phasing in classroom-based learning later in the semester, and providing in-person instruction like normal or combining multiple learning formats, according to interim Superintendent Jane Belmore.
The eventual choice depends on the pandemic’s trajectory, Wisconsin’s COVID-19 testing capacity and residents’ adherence to social distancing principles.
“The one thing that we’re focused on the most is that when we return, we want to be sure we are helping students recover moving forward and that we are working together to adjust instruction to make up for some of the time that has been lost,” Lisa Kvistad, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, said at a virtual news conference Wednesday.
As uncertainty lingers, district officials are working to better train teachers on best practices in online instruction.
“We don’t really know what’s going to be best yet (for the fall),” Belmore said. “But the one thing we do know is we will always benefit from our professional development on virtual learning. We need to tap into what virtual learning can bring to us during a regular school year.”
Madison high school students to be graded on pass/no pass; 3,000 students without internet (expensive K-12 system built for a long gone era).
Madison’s Infinite Campus expenditures have been a missed opportunity. The District last published a usage survey in 2012….
Gov. Brown and the Oregon Teachers Union shut down online charter schools
In a time of national emergency, when our leaders need to be thinking outside the box and giving struggling families more choices rather than fewer, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown instead decided to pay back political favors by shutting down online charter schools.
On paper, online charter schools that allow students to proceed at their own pace and learn from the comfort and security of their own home is the ideal response to a pandemic that has just closed the state’s schools for the remainder of the academic year. Closing brick and mortar schools will especially hurt large numbers of students who are already struggling academically. Most high school seniors need just a few more credits to graduate so they can attend college in the fall, credits they may not be able to get without an online charter school. Allowing such an option will help these seniors catch up to where they should be at this point in the semester and perhaps even graduate on time and as planned.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Madison high school students to be graded on pass/no pass; 3,000 students without internet (expensive K-12 system built for a long gone era)
Madison high school students will receive “pass” or “no pass” grades for the second semester as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupts traditional schooling, while more than 10% of Madison students lack internet access needed to take part in virtual learning, district officials said Wednesday.
With the aim of not penalizing students for circumstances out of their control, the Madison School District won’t grade high school students on a traditional letter-based system in the third and fourth quarters, and is freezing their GPAs and implementing a pass/no pass grading system.
“We really took a lot of time and a lot of thought to make a decision we felt was going to serve the majority of our students the best and not harm students,” Cindy Green, the district’s executive director of secondary programs, said during a virtual news conference Wednesday. “We felt that a pass/no pass was the best way to go that was most equitable for all of our students.”
Green said several factors led to the decision, including a large number of students lacking internet at home as the district is in the middle of its second week of virtual learning.
A survey sent out to families earlier during the school closure, which began a month ago for Dane County schools, identified about 3,000 students in 1,800 to 1,900 households who didn’t have internet.
Additionally, the district stressed that officials understand the potential affects on post-high school plans, and MMSD will provide letter grades when requested by a third party like a scholarship or for NCAA athletic eligibility.
“College admissions offices have been clear that they will be understanding of the various ways high schools will be approaching grading during these last two quarters,” the guidelines state.
In a March 31 letter to school district administrators, state superintendent Carolyn Stanford Taylor included a memo that specifically suggested offering “feedback in lieu of grades.”
Notes, links and commentary on Madison’s planned 2020 tax and spending increase referendum plans.
“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”.
Madison has long spent far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts.
2019: WHY ARE MADISON’S STUDENTS STRUGGLING TO READ?
My recent email to the Madison School Board and District Chief Financial Officer:
I hope that you, your families and colleagues are well.
I write to see if anyone has modeled the implications of a property tax base drop on the proposed 2020 referendum? Madison’s property tax base has increased substantially over the past decade, somewhat due to a significant federal taxpayer ($38B+) electronic medical record backdoor subsidy.
How might a construction slow down and declining property values due to a recession/deep downturn affect the proposed tax & spending increases?
I further wondered if the looming substantial federal funds might be applied to replace part or all of the planned property tax based referendum?
Finally, I was part of the group that reviewed Infinite Campus (and other similar systems) years ago. Some time ago, the District completed a teacher, staff and parent usage study. Has that been updated? Please forward the % of teachers who use IC daily, weekly and monthly along with the % of parents, staff and students for similar time frames.
Best wishes,
Jim
Madison School Board winners differ on school-based police; only 1 had union support
Gomez Schmidt’s victory also meant a loss for Madison Teachers Inc., which had endorsed Pearson. Gomez Schmidt had the backing of the current Seat 6 holder, Kate Toews, who decided not to seek reelection.
In the other competitive race, though, the union-backed Vander Meulen earned a 20-percentage-point victory over Strong.
Gomez Schmidt has said that as a board member, she wants to prioritize choosing a new elementary reading curriculum, increasing trust and transparency, and effectively managing the budget.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Madison Superintendent Search Rhetoric
The decision by Matthew Gutiérrez to back out after his selection as the next superintendent of the Madison Metropolitan School District confirmed that he was not the right choice for this district at this time.
Now, the school board must make a better choice. That is unlikely to happen if the board conducts a national search and selects a superintendent who is looking to climb a “career ladder” from one district to the next.
The union that represents teachers and school employees, Madison Teachers Inc., makes a good point when is says that the board should focus on local candidates.
Gutierrez was one of three finalists, all of whom were people of color and all of whom were from out of state. The other two finalists were both black, and some black community leaders criticized the Gutierrez hire in a February letter, suggesting the district needed a black leader. Menéndez Coller is a member of the Latino Consortium for Action, which replied with its own letter in support of Gutierrez and asking the community to give him a chance.
“I want a Superintendent that understands equity and understands how to roll out specific initiatives that will allow Black kids, Hmong kids, Latino kids, kids of color move forward,” Menéndez Coller wrote in her email Monday.
Mirilli said the public discussion around the letters got her thinking about the challenges any new superintendent would face in Madison, but specifically one of color. She said that while it’s important to her and others to have a leader who has a different “personal experience” than has been represented in MMSD’s leadership in the past, it’s just as important for that person to “understand that they will have some blind spots.”
Related: Jennifer Cheatham (2013-2019) and the Madison Experience.
Notes, links and commentary on Madison’s planned 2020 tax and spending increase referendum plans.
“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”.
Madison has long spent far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts.
2019: WHY ARE MADISON’S STUDENTS STRUGGLING TO READ?
Madison School Board offers feedback on K-5 literacy plan
Staff began working on the new curriculum adoption last year, following a 2018 needs assessment that showed a “need for materials K-5 that have a structured phonics component, are standards aligned and are more culturally and linguistically responsive, historically accurate and inclusive,” according to Monday’s presentation.
The steps since have included forming focus groups made up of staff and families, a pilot in five kindergarten classrooms and regular Review Committee meetings.
Staff plan to soon begin a request for proposals process and implement sample lessons in selected grades later this year. In December 2020 or January 2021, they expect to make a recommendation to the School Board and have a board vote, with implementation that fall following staff training.
Kvistad told the board staff had learned from the last materials adoption a decade ago, noting that “materials are different now,” as is support for teachers.
“We found ourselves moving too fast, I think, around implementation that we couldn’t learn from what we did and adjust moving on,” she said.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Madison School District looks to make virtual learning flexible, no ‘harm’ to grades amid COVID-19 pandemic
Madison students will have flexibility in their virtual school day schedule, teachers will hold remote office hours, and assessments during online learning will not “harm” a students’ grades.
After three weeks out of class following an order for all Wisconsin schools to close to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, the Madison School District on Monday is launching its virtual learning plan designed to supplement missed classroom time, which could last until the end of the school year.
But when the district’s 27,000 students make the switch to virtual school, things will look quite different, from the number of hours a day spent learning to how students interact with teachers.
I suggested to several Madison Superintendents that teachers and staff receive a stipend to purchase and maintain an internet connected device (cellular iPad would be my choice) and begin to interact with everyone using this device. Further, Apple’s assistive efforts are substantial.
This occurred during Infinite Campus evaluation and implementation meetings. I wonder what the teacher/staff utilization data looks like today?
Infinite Campus – or similar – was for many years an expensive, missed opportunity.
Despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, Madison has apparently made little progress online– in 2020.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Madison’s Virtual Learning Website is Live
We are committed to providing robust learning experiences for our students of MMSD during this time of school closure. Our instructional leaders are working to provide a virtual learning experience for our students that incorporates family engagement, limited screen time, and student overall health and emotional wellness.
We recognize the impact that these unusual circumstances are having on all of us. We encourage our students and families to continue to find and create moments of familiarity and maintain other routines as much as possible, including communicating with friends, and staying active.
I suggested to several Madison Superintendents that teachers and staff receive a stipend to purchase and maintain an internet connected device (cellular iPad would be my choice) and begin to interact with everyone using this device. Further, Apple’s assistive efforts are substantial.
This occurred during Infinite Campus evaluation and implementation meetings. I wonder what the teacher/staff utilization data looks like today?
Infinite Campus – or similar – was for many years an expensive, missed opportunity.
Despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, Madison has apparently made little progress online– in 2020.
Madison teacher’s accidental text to parent: ‘I want to slap them through the phone!’
According to a police report released Wednesday to the State Journal under the state’s public records law, the parent, Tyeisha Ivy, considered the text a threat and reported it to police because she wanted it documented. Ringelstetter was not arrested, and no charges were filed in the case.
Ivy told police that with school canceled because of the coronavirus outbreak, she was exchanging texts with Ringelstetter in an attempt to get online access to homework for her daughter.
In screen shots of the texts sent to the parent and reported by Madison365, Ringelstetter appears to be asking a co-worker for help getting online access set up and wrote “I want to reach out and slap them through the phone!!
According to the police report, Ringelstetter told police she was frustrated with the school’s closing, that the text was meant for someone else and that she never meant to slap the parent or her daughter.
I suggested to several Madison Superintendents that teachers and staff receive a stipend to purchase and maintain an internet connected device (cellular iPad would be my choice) and begin to interact with everyone using this device. Further, Apple’s assistive efforts are substantial.
This occurred during Infinite Campus evaluation and implementation meetings. I wonder what the teacher/staff utilization data looks like today?
Infinite Campus – or similar – was for many years an expensive, missed opportunity.
Despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, Madison has apparently made little progress online – in 2020.
Madison schools use social media to keep students connected during COVID-19 break
Others are offering read-a-longs, bedtime stories and daily mindfulness practice videos. The district has offered enrichment materials online, but so far not mandated virtual learning. An email to families sent Wednesday night stated that virtual learning would begin in early- or mid-April if schools are still closed at that time.
“It is taking time to work through the many details, such as the large number of our families who do not have long-term access to the internet or devices, how to best meet students with special needs concerns, and ensuring our teachers are equipped to teach online and that we have the infrastructure to do it,” the email from interim superintendent Jane Belmore states. “We know from our discussions with other area superintendents of larger districts that they are wrestling with the same concerns.
In the meantime, Elvehjem Elementary School posted a Facebook Live video of principal Sarah Larson reading “Goodnight, Madison,” a book the students have read together before, she said in the video. It has more than 1,000 views.
Commentary on Virtual Learning and the taxpayer supported Madison School District.
Commentary on Virtual Learning & The Madison School District
In an email Friday, district spokesman Tim LeMonds said the district is now aiming to roll out virtual learning the first week of April, but it “takes time and thoughtful planning to prepare an all inclusive virtual learning program.”
“The complexities being addressed include there being a large number of our families who do not have internet access or devices,” he said in an email. “Additionally, how to best meet our students with special needs concerns.”
The district also needs to make sure its approximately 2,700 teachers are trained, LeMonds said, and a “reliable infrastructure” needs to be in place to deliver online instruction.
There’s also a large number of students in the district who don’t speak English as their first language, speaking more than 110 other languages as their primary language, LeMonds said.
I recall discussions many years ago about creating a fast, wireless network at every school for neighborhood internet connectivity.
In addition, we discussed changing the District’s technology policy from top down to BYOD, that is bring your own device. I suggested to several Superintendents that teachers and staff receive a stipend to purchase and maintain an internet connected device (cellular iPad would be my choice) and begin to interact with everyone using this device. Further, Apple’s assistive efforts are substantial.
This occurred during Infinite Campus evaluation and implementation meetings. I wonder what the teacher/staff utilization data looks like today?
Infinite Campus – or similar – was for many years an expensive, missed opportunity.
Open Records Response: “Community Leader & Stakeholder” meeting with Madison Superintendent Candidates
On January 21, 2020, I sent this email to board@madison.k12.wi.us
Hi:
I hope that you are well.
I write to make an open records request for a list of invitees and participants in last week’s “community leader and stakeholder” meetings with the (Superintendent) candidates.
Thank you and best wishes,
Jim
Hearing nothing, I wrote on February 13, 2020:
Has my open records request gone missing?
School Board member Cris Carusi emailed me, twice that day, kindly following up on this request.
I received an email on February 18, 2020 from Barbara Osborn that my “request has been shared with our legal department”.
I received this response from Sherrice M Perry on March 13, 2020:
Dear Mr. James Zellmer,
Please accept this email as the Madison Metropolitan School District’s (the “District”) response to your public records request for “a list of invitees and participants in last week’s ‘community leader and stakeholder’ meetings with the candidates.” Attached below are the records that are most responsive to your request.
With regard to the requested records, the District redacted portions of the attached records consistent with the provisions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA; 34 CFR 99.3 et seq.) and Wis. Stat. § 118.125(1)(d). The requested records contain “personally identifiable information.” Pursuant to FERPA, “personally identifiable information” is defined as “information requested by a person who the educational agency or institution reasonably believes knows the identity of the student to whom the record relates” or “information that, alone or in combination, is linked or linkable to a specific student that would allow a reasonable person in the school community, who does not have personal knowledge of the relevant circumstances, to identify the student with reasonable certainty.” (34 CFR 99 3). According to these definitions, the District determined that the redacted documents contain information regarding very small populations (e.g. one or two students) from a distinct group or affiliation and thus, a “reasonable person in the school community” could identify the students who were referenced in the record. Nonetheless, by providing you the record with only limited redactions, the District is in full compliance with Wis. Stat. 19.36(6).
Please note: The denials, in the form of the redacted material referenced above, are subject to review in an action for mandamus under Wis. Stat. 19.37(1), or by application to the local district attorney or Attorney General. See Wis. Stat. 19.35(4)(b).
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the District’s Public Information Officer, Timothy LeMonds, at (608) 663-1903.
Much more on the 2019 Madison School District Superintendent Search, here.
On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.
According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.
Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.
2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”
2009: An emphasis on adult employment.
2013: What will be different, this time?
Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:
Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”
“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.
Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Madison Behavior Education Plan Meeting
The Madison School District’s much discussed “Behavior Education Plan” seems worth a deeper dive. A Tuesday evening District presentation [slides / survey: 1.1MB PDF] – mostly a discussion – offers a substantive lens into our increasingly challenged K-12 system.
Approximately 25 people attended this event, including some district employees. 2020 Madison School Board Candidates Chris Gomez-Schmidt, Maia Pearson and Wayne Strong attended the meeting.
My interest is seeing what, if any substantive efforts are underway to address our long term, disastrous reading results.
Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results [Video]:
I am currently the reading interventionist teacher at West High School.
I’ve been there for 4 years. Previous to that I’ve been in the school district as a regular ed teacher for about 20 years. I started in the early 90s.
I have (a) question I want to ask you guys. What district-wide systems are in place as we use our map data to monitor the reading student achievement?
Student by student, not school by school but also school by school and provide support for the school the teachers and the students that need it.
And especially to help students who score in the bottom percentiles who will need an intervention which is significantly different than differentiation.
I was (a) TAG coordinator (talent and gifted coordinator) for 4 years at Hamilton and I have extensive background with the talent and gifted and differentiation training.
( and teaching of teachers). Now I’m in interventionist and they are significantly different we need interventions to serve the lowest scoring kids that we have.
Here’s my data from this year and this is why I’m here:
Of the 65 students plus or minus it kind of changes this year 24 of them are regular ed students.
Another way to say they don’t have an IEP so there is no excuse for that reading intervention in (that group).
12 of those 24 have been enrolled in Madison School since Pre-K kindergarten or kindergarden. 12 students have been in Madison Schools.
They have High attendance. They have been in the same (you know) feeder school they have not had high mobility. There is no excuse for 12 of my students to be reading at the first second or third grade level and that’s where they’re at and I’m angry and I’m not the only one that’s angry.
The teachers are angry because we are being held accountable for things that we didn’t do at the high school level. Of those 24 students, 21 of them have been enrolled in Madison for four or more years.
Of those 24 students one is Caucasian the rest of them identify as some other ethnic group.
I am tired of the district playing what I called whack-a-mole, (in) another words a problem happens at Cherokee boom we bop it down and we we fix it temporarily and then something at Sherman or something at Toki or something at Faulk and we bop it down and its quiet for awhile but it has not been fixed on a system-wide level and that’s what has to change.
Thank you very much.
Madison K-12 incoming Superintendent Gutiérrez Commentary
Tuesday afternoon, he spent 15 minutes taking questions from the press and another 15 minutes answering questions from seven students at Glendale Elementary School, where the press conference was held.
“There is some division in the community, so we’ve got to bridge that gap,” Gutiérrez said. “There is some division between the Doyle center and our campuses, we’ve got to bridge that gap. There is some division between departments in central administration, we’ve got to bridge that gap.
“My goal is to work to unify the community, the school district, so that we can all begin moving in the same direction and focusing on what matters; that is the 27,000 students within this organization.”
On closing academic achievement gaps, Gutierrez said he wants to understand what the district has in place to support “rigorous, relevant, quality instruction.”
He added he wants to focus on early literacy and making sure students are reading at grade level.
“We’ve seen small gains but not what we have hoped to see with the investment of people and resources,” Gutierrez said about academic outcomes.
On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.
According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.
Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.
2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”
2009: An emphasis on adult employment.
2013: What will be different, this time?
Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:
Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”
“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.
Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Madison School Board leans toward deductibles instead of switching health insurers
Increasing the amount staff pay for premiums would see teachers paying 6% of a HMO family plan — up from 3% — to about $44 more a month. Certain hourly employees, such as special education assistants, would pay 2.5% of an HMO family plan instead of 1.25%, or $8.53 more per month.
“It was only two years ago, 2017-18, when the District went from three health plans to two, discontinuing Quartz (then Unity) and moving all Unity-covered employees to GHC or Dean plans,” the memo states. “Forcing employees to switch again only three years later is too disruptive.”
Board member Cris Carusi said it seemed “easiest” to “listen to the union,” and board member Kate Toews expressed a similar sentiment in supporting “Option 1,” which adds $100 single and $200 family deductibles.
“Option 1 limits disruption and that is incredibly valuable for both families and teachers as well as for staff and administration,” Toews said.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Health insurance costs have long been an issue in the Madison School District.
Administrators warned that benefits were unsustainable in 2014.
Much more on the planned 2020 tax and spending increase Madison referendum.
A presenter [org chart] further mentioned that Madison spends about $1 per square foot in annual budget maintenance while Milwaukee is about $2.
Employee health insurance, referenda discussions on Madison School Board agenda Monday
The Madison School Board will discuss the potential November referenda and proposed employee health insurance changes Monday.
The Operations Work Group meeting, which begins at 5 p.m. at the Doyle Administration Building, 545 W. Dayton St., is likely the last opportunity for board members to ask for broad changes ahead of anticipated votes at the March 23 meeting.
Presentations planned for the board Monday show similar referenda plans as have been discussed for months, though staff have offered up three options for the operating referendum ask in addition to the $36 million one that has been previously discussed. The additional options would all lower the amount, reducing the tax burden but also forcing tighter budgets.
The health insurance changes, first reported by the Wisconsin State Journal last week, would require employees to contribute more to their premiums and could have the district change one of its providers.
According to Monday’s meeting materials, there is a $4.6 million increase in premiums the providers will charge the district, which had budgeted $0 for an increase in funding employee benefits whether an operating referendum passes or fails. That means the gap needs to be filled in other ways.
Changes to providers and potentially changing the plans retirees use would save an estimated $3.8 million, while doubling the premium contributions for most staff would save $1.8 million, according to the presentation planned Monday. The premium contribution for teachers on the HMO plan, for example, would go from 3% to 6%, costing an extra $44.48 per month.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Health insurance costs have long been an issue in the Madison School District.
Administrators warned that benefits were unsustainable in 2014.
Much more on the planned 2020 tax and spending increase Madison referendum.
A presenter [org chart] further mentioned that Madison spends about $1 per square foot in annual budget maintenance while Milwaukee is about $2.
Madison School Board candidate forums begin this weekend, continue throughout March
Voters will have several opportunities this month to hear from candidates for Madison School Board beginning this weekend.
The East Side Progressives will hold a forum Sunday, March 8, at Lake Edge Lutheran Church, 4032 Monona Drive. It’s the first of four forums currently planned for the month before the Tuesday, April 7, election.
In the two contested races, Wayne Strong is challenging incumbent Nicki Vander Meulen for Seat 6 and newcomers Chris Gomez Schmidt and Maia Pearson are facing off to take over Seat 7 from Kate Toews, who is not running for re-election. Savion Castro is running unopposed for a one-year term in Seat 2, to which he was appointed last summer after Mary Burke resigned from the board.
[Pearson, Gomez Schmidt advance to general election for Madison School Board Seat 6]
Each of the elections is at large, so any eligible voter can vote for all of the seats on the ballot.
The March 8 forum, which begins at 3 p.m., will feature candidates talking about their vision for meeting the district’s challenges followed by a “speed dating” format offering the chance to meet each candidate in a small-group setting, according to the Facebook event. All five candidates plan to attend.
March 17, the Cap Times will host a forum with questions asked of the five candidates by education reporter Scott Girard and Simpson Street Free Press managing editor Taylor Kilgore. That forum will begin at 7 p.m. in the East High School auditorium, 2222 E. Washington Ave.
On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.
According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.
Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.
2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”
2009: An emphasis on adult employment.
2013: What will be different, this time?
Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:
Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”
“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.
Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Madison School District High School “Grade Flooring” continues….
Under a new pilot program the lowest grade students could get on assignments is 40 or 50 percent, not a zero.
Studies show freshman year is the most important year in high school and Geoffrey D. Borman, UW-Madison Education Policy Professor, said it can make or break you.
The modern A-F grading system has been around since the 1900’s.
It’s an evaluation performance of students that MMSD officials said is outdated.
MMSD is currently using the 0 to 100 percentage grading system, but high school teachers are trying out a new grade scale making forty or fifty percent– the new zero. In other words, a student could simply not turn in their assignment and still get credit.
“The grade scale itself is something I think not all students are accustomed to,” Geoffrey D. Borman, UW-Madison Education Policy Professor said.
Borman said one of the fears students face their freshman year is letter grades and failing early can have severe consequences.
…….
“Rather than coddling them we’re giving a little bit of a boost to them to support them and allow them to make a more successful transition,” he said.
NBC15 spoke to parents who did not want to go on camera, but said they feel this grade scale is “dumbing it down” and only encourages students to be lazy in school.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Commentary on the Madison School District’s healthcare costs
According to MTI’s memo, health insurance changes under consideration include:
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Moving future retirees from health insurance plans offered through the district to the state Department of Employee Trust Funds’ Local Annuitant Health Program, a relatively new program for retired public employees.
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Increasing employee premium contributions for teachers and other employees from 3% to 6% and for certain hourly workers, such as security assistants, from 1.25% to 2.5%.
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Adding a $100 deductible for individual plans and $200 for family plans.
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Dropping GHC and replacing it with a plan through Quartz.
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Increasing employee premium contributions to 10% or 12%.
Keillor said a major increase in employee premium contributions is a “nonstarter.”
“We have not gotten any kind of sense over one that’s more preferred,” he said of the options under consideration. “Right now, I’d say none of these are preferable options to folks.”
But Keillor acknowledged the union doesn’t have a say in the decision other than amplifying the voices of employees because Act 10 — the 2011 law that severely limited the power of most public-sector unions — restricts unions to only negotiating on base wages.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Health insurance costs have long been an issue in the Madison School District.
Administrators warned that benefits were unsustainable in 2014.
‘Unlearning whiteness’ in the Madison schools
The school lesson plan is chaos
“[We] talk about race as if it was every race but whiteness. How can we support you, elevate your work around actually talking about white culture in our schools and how teachers can start doing this work of, like, unlearning whiteness.”
— Madison school board member Ananda Mirilli on the district’s Black Excellence Coalition, Madison Board of Education 1:58:52 into the meeting.
Once again, the Madison school board proved Monday (02-24-2020) that it cannot keep order at its own meetings. No wonder there is chaos in the classroom.
School board members had to huddle around president Gloria Reyes to be heard as the usual suspects stormed the stage of the Doyle administration building and chanted their slogans. “Don’t arrest us; arrest the police.” This being Madison’s public schools, the disrupters were not arrested. As for the police, it was a close vote.
At issue was a $35,000 appropriation to continue policing special events such as athletic contests and dances. It barely passed, 4 to 3 (Ali Muldrow, Ananda Mirilli, and Nicki Vander Meulen voting no). Roll the tape, Lester:
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
2013 – 2019: Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison Experience.
Is this the best Madison’s (taxpayer supported) public schools can do?
Today’s blog excerpts Kaleem Caire’s social media thread in the wake of his letter, co-signed by other local black leaders, expressing disappointment that Matthew Gutierrez of Texas was chosen as new superintendent of Madison WI schools over their preferred candidate, Taylor Eric Thomas of Georgia. Caire expresses frustration over the virulent Progressive Dane/Madison Teachers Inc. faction of Madison progressivism that defeated him for school board last year.
Other signatories were Pastor Marcus Allen, Ray Allen, Ruben Anthony, Pastor Joseph Baring, Carola Gaines, Pastor Alex Gee, Greg Jones, Kirbie Mack, Vanessa McDowell, John Odom, Teresa Sanders and Yolanda Shelton Morris.
Jeffrey Spitzer-Resnick is the very woke, Derail the Jail enemy of police in schools, ally of Ali Muldrow, Brandi Grayson, Freedom Inc., et cetera.
Yet another example of how identity politics is roiling education here in Madison and nationwide.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
2013 – 2019: Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison Experience.
Commentary on the Madison School District’s teacher climate
In a school district that is 18% black, 57% of students suspended from school the first semester of the current school year (2019-20) were African-American. White students, 43% of the student body, accounted for 11% of out-of-school suspensions.
To school board member Ali Muldrow, the data showed more about school staff than about students’ behavior. “We are really excited to discipline black students and seem far less compelled to discipline or suspend or expel white students.”
Board member Savion Castro said the data is “evidence of racism in our schools” that needs to be looked at “through a lens of public health.”
School board member Ananda Mirilli “pointed to adults who are upholding an old system that gives us this [disproportionality] year after year after year.”
Play by the rules and you’ll still get thrown under the bus, as Mr. Rob learned at Whitehorse middle school. Or use the N-word in an educational setting.
Heading for the exits
Heading for the exits
Good Madison progressives would rather blame Scott Walker. But the former Republican governor did not hire Jennifer Cheatham nor did he elect Ali, Ananda, and Savion. We’ll know the situation is going from bad to worse if Muldrow/Mirilli protege Maia Pearson survives today’s (02-18-2020) primary election
More teachers left the Madison Metropolitan School District during and after the 2018-19 school year than each of the four previous years, according to the district’s annual human resources report.
The report, posted on the district’s Research, Accountability and Data Office this month, shows 8.3% of teachers left the district, not including retirements. That’s up from the 6.7% that left in 2017-18, 6.9% in 2016-17, 6.1% in 2015-16 and 5.5% in 2014-15.
The count includes those who left between Nov. 1 of the given school year and Oct. 31 of the following year.
Notes and links on the 2020 Madison School Board Candidates.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Parents sue Madison schools over transgender policy
A group of parents filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging the Madison school district’s transgender policy is unconstitutional because it prohibits teachers and staff from informing parents that their children want to switch sexes.
Conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed the lawsuit on the parents’ behalf in Dane County Circuit Court.
According to the lawsuit, Madison schools adopted a policy in 2018 that states a person’s gender identity can be male, female, a blend of both or neither and is determined by person’s sense of self. The policy states that the district is committed to affirming each student’s self-designated gender identity and the district will strive to “disrupt the gender binary” with books and lessons stating that everyone has the right to choose their gender.
The district’s policy interferes with parents’ right to direct their own children’s health treatment and religious upbringing, the suit states. Eleven of the parents are Christians and believe the “sex each of us is born with is a gift, not an arbitrary imposition.”
A policy affecting such fundamental rights must protect a compelling government interest in the most narrowly tailored and least restrictive ways. The suit says there is no such interest in “keeping secret from parents that their child is dealing with gender dysphoria.”
Brian Juchems, co-director at GSAFE, a support and advocacy group for LGBTQ students, said Madison’s policies provide “space for students to understand their identity while building confidence to tell their parents.”
He said most state school districts prohibit discrimination against transgender students, but few have adopted formal procedures like Madison to guide staff in providing support.
He also agrees parents should be in the conversation when a student is ready. “Telling your child that you will love and support them no matter who they are is a way for families to make it safer for the child to have that conversation
This action seeks to vindicate parents’ fundamental and constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their children. The Madison Metropolitan School District has violated this important right by adopting a policy designed to circumvent parental involvement in a pivotal decision affecting their children’s health and future. The policy enables children, of any age, to socially transition to a different gender identity at school without parental notice or consent, requires all teachers to enable this transition, and then prohibits teachers from communicating with parents about this potentially life-altering choice without the child’s consent. Even more, the Madison School District directs its teachers and staff to deceive parents by reverting to the child’s birth name and corresponding pronouns whenever the child’s parents are nearby. These policies violate Plaintiffs’ rights as parents.
2020 Madison School Board Candidate Forum – 100 Black Men
“Teachers are ready to do this work, but for whatever reason there’s a barrier set up in front of them,” Ball said. “A goal is to have no gap. I know we can do it in this community.”
School Board candidate Ball wants to ‘get out of the way of people doing their work’ to help close opportunity gap
Gomez Schmidt, the director of enrichment at test prep and college admissions tutoring service Galin Education, is a Minneapolis native with two school-age children — one at Memorial High School, another in seventh-grade at EAGLE School in Fitchburg — and a third that graduated from Memorial. She stressed the importance of the district’s work toward adopting a new literacy curriculum, expected to be rolled out in fall 2021, as a tool to help close the gap and develop children’s reading skills early.
“We have to go back to the basics and we have to find a curriculum that teaches explicit phonics and teaches kids what they have to know to read,” Gomez Schmidt said.
Pearson, a revenue agent with the state Department of Revenue, has three children in Madison schools, all at Lincoln. She pointed to herself Monday as an example of what Black Excellence can look like in Madison, as someone whose family has been here for three generations, despite the ongoing disparities.
Notes and links on the 2020 Madison School Board Candidates.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
“We definitely see science-based reading instruction as urgent in our – Madison – schools” (!)
The 2018-19 state Forward Exam, given to students in grades 3 through 8, showed 35% of students scored proficient or advanced on the English Language Arts portion. For black students, it was 10.1% and for Hispanic students, 16%.
Those scores come amid a nationwide, and more recently statewide, push for using the Science of Reading to educate students at an early age. That includes the use of phonics — the understanding of the relationship between letters and sounds — and connecting that knowledge to text.
As detailed in an Isthmus article this spring, the district and state have, until now, focused on so-called “balanced literacy,” an approach that mixes foundational skills education and phonics with group and individual work on reading and word study. Kvistad said they’ve heard the push for more phonics education from teachers throughout the review process.
“We want explicit, structured phonics,” Kvistad said. “Our teachers are saying they want that.”
Morateck said new materials also provide clearer direction for teachers by grouping instructional components of literacy, such as grammar, into “text sets.”
“We actually know a little bit more about the science of reading and how to teach reading,” Kvistad said. “We know more now that reading actually has to be taught. Children don’t just come knowing that.”
This year, the district is doing a “field test” with materials from curriculum provider EL Education in five kindergarten classes at Allis and Gompers elementary schools.
Morateck said the point of the pilot is to learn about implementing new classroom lessons and what training will be necessary.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
‘This work is so crucial’: Madison School District staff lead conversations about Black Lives Matter At School Week
Every Madison Metropolitan School District site had staff participating in the Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action this year.
The national movement to hold a week of support for black students ran Feb. 3-7 this year, culminating Thursday night in Madison with a sold-out staff showing of the movie “Just Mercy” and a post-show discussion.
Participating staff led lessons about the 13 Black Lives Matter Global Network principles, intersectionality and black contributions to history: restorative justice, empathy, loving engagement, diversity, globalism, queer affirming, trans affirming, collective value, intergenerational, black families, black villages, unapologetically black and black women.
Madison Teachers Inc. staff member Kerry Motoviloff, who helps leads the union’s social justice and racial equity work, said teachers customized the lessons for students in the age group they teach through an elementary and secondary curriculum provided through the national movement. She saw elementary teachers using things like picture books or having students illustrate how they knew black lives mattered, while older students had a chance to offer more feedback about how the school system was doing.
At Memorial High School, for example, the county’s Black Student Unions gathered Tuesdayin the auditorium to hear from a motivational speaker who told his “prison to Ph.D.” story and answered questions about how the students could continue activism.
“This year we’re seeing much more support for and engagement with our Black Student Unions, that’s very helpful,” Motoviloff said.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Commentary on a 2020 Madison School Board Candidate appearance
Three candidates for an open Madison School Board seat aligned on several issues facing the school district while offering their own solutions to other topics during a forum Tuesday.
The trio seeking the board’s Seat 6 — Karen Ball, Christina Gomez Schmidt and Maia Pearson — spoke of rebuilding trust between the community and the Madison School District, identified areas they would cut in a funding shortage, and made their pitches before the Feb. 18 primary.
Ball, director of academic success at Edgewood College, said she wants to ensure an effective transition for the new superintendent and prepare the community for two potential referendums this fall.
Gomez Schmidt, director of enrichment for Galin Education, a college preparation and admissions assistance company, said her focuses include increasing transparency and ensuring schools are safe for students and teachers.
Pearson, a revenue agent for the state Department of Revenue, said some of her priorities would be finding ways to expand 4-year-old kindergarten to full-day and strengthening partnerships with businesses.
The top two vote-getters in the February primary will compete in the April 7 election for Seat 6, which is being vacated by incumbent Kate Toews. The term is three years.
Candidates were asked what they would do to fix a lack of transparency from the district some people perceive and how they would go about rebuilding the community’s trust.
Gomez Schmidt talked about making sure the board has enough time and information to analyze important decisions so it is not rushed. She also said information about new proposals should be given to the public in a more timely manner.
Pearson cited the recent community forums with the superintendent finalists as good examples of the board being transparent.
She also said groups like the district’s Black Excellence Coalition, which is largely made up of community members, are good outlets for people to share their thoughts.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Meanwhile, Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 district continues to plan for a substantial tax & spending increase referendum this fall.
Notes and links on the Madison School District’s academic and safety climate
Board of education president Gloria Reyes demands “the conversation around school discipline needs to be centered on race,” according to the WI State Journal.
Those who counter that school discipline needs to be centered on behavior will be asked to leave the conversation. Maybe the answer is pick out some white kids and toss them out of school. Got to make the numbers work.
So, come clean, Madison teachers. Admit your guilt. Quit suspending kids who shoot a fellow student at Jefferson middle school. Stop picking on the ring leaders of those cafeteria brawls. Allow that girl to wreak havoc at that Whitehorse middle school classroom. Maybe tomorrow she will behave. Got to make the numbers work. Don’t want to wind up like Mr. Rob, an out-of-work pariah. Keep your heads down.
More:
Do you enforce order in your classroom? SHAME! Or do you press the earbuds in tighter and ignore the chaos? GREAT!
You believe adult authority figures have something to teach our young people? REPENT! Or are you doing penance for your complicity in 1619? YOU ARE SAVED!
Demand personal responsibility and academic performance? What are you? A Republican? !!!
Inspire students to work harder to overcome hurdles? How do you light your tiki torches, fella — with kerosene or paraffin?
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
Meanwhile, Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 district continues to plan for a substantial tax & spending increase referendum this fall.
As suspensions rise, Madison School Board unhappy with racial disparities
In the first semester of this school year, 1,524 out-of-school suspensions were issued. That’s up from 910 in the fall of 2015 — a 67% increase — and the number of fall semester suspensions has steadily increased during the past five years.
“If we say this is about how black kids behave, I think that that’s a problem,” Muldrow said. “If we say this is about how we interact with black and African American students, then I think we’re having a more accurate conversation.”
Board President Gloria Reyes said the conversation around school discipline needs to be centered on race but added that the good work teachers are doing to support the district’s anti-racism efforts also should be recognized.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
WILL plans to sue Madison schools over gender identity guidance
WILL wrote in its December letter that it was representing a group of 15 parents with students in the district and that the guidance “contains certain policies that violate our clients’ constitutional rights as parents.”
“Specifically, the Policy allows children of any age to change gender identity at school without parental notice or consent, prohibits teachers and other staff from notifying parents about this (without the child’s consent), and, in some circumstances, even requires teachers and other staff to actively deceive parents,” the letter stated.
Madison Memorial High School junior Maggie Di Sanza and sophomore Amira Pierotti, who lead the school’s Gender Equity Association, told the Cap Times it’s instead an essential component of protecting students’ rights at a time that could be especially difficult for them, even if their parents are supportive.
“It’s just incomprehensible to me that anyone would target these rights and do it with not a care about the students, about kids,” Amira said. “This (potential lawsuit) isn’t for the betterment of others, this is because you are scared that you don’t know what’s going on with your kids and that you’re afraid they’re trans or gender-expansive because you are transphobic.”
The two students said they began to rally for support of the guidance after WILL’s initial complaint in the fall.
This week, they began circulating a petition to other district schools and creating signage for teachers to put up in their classrooms to reassure students they would support them. Amira said it’s especially important given the statistics of non-binary and gender fluid students being more likely to be kicked out by their parents, report anxiety and consider self-harm.
“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
Complaint: Gun found at Madison West High School last week followed armed robbery on Saturday
Williams then provided the backpack to Creech, and told one of the other officers there was a gun inside. The complaint states Creech found a semi-automatic firearm in the laptop compartment of the backpack. The magazine was loaded but no rounds were housed within the chamber when the gun was found.
Williams faces two counts each of armed robbery with threat of force, felony intimidation of a victim and false imprisonment and one count of possession of a firearm on grounds of a school.
Williams was scheduled for an initial appearance in court Monday afternoon.
2005: Gangs and school violence forum: audio and video.
2017: West High Teacher on our disastrous reading results:
“Here’s my data from this year and this is why I’m here:
Of the 65 students plus or minus it kind of changes this year 24 of them are regular ed students.
Another way to say they don’t have an IEP so there is no excuse for that reading intervention in (that group).
12 of those 24 have been enrolled in Madison School since Pre-K kindergarten or kindergarden. 12 students have been in Madison Schools.”
Guilty white teacher defends Madison school chaos
This trenchant observation drew a response from one Stan Endiliver, who (contrary to his intention) betrays why virtue-signaling progressives like himself are piping at-risk kids to disaster by playing the victim fife.
MMSD teacher here; relax
1. If you are a parent of a student in MMSD, you have nothing to fear.[Blaska: as long as you stay out of the line of fire.] There are many caring teachers and principals that are doing great things. Our district is not perfect, but we are doing our best to serve all kids …
3. If you are looking to Blaska as a saviour, just move. [Blaska: Which is why Sun Prairie is building a second high school] He has no idea what he is talking about. I am in a MMSD school every day, and have been for 15 years, and his vision of us is ludicrous. Leading kids out of school to squad cars is exactly why we are in the position we are in. We have a lot of kids dealing with real trauma and there are a lot of problems that are rooted in mental health issues. Give the district more resources to heal, and that would be a great place to start.
5. It all comes to back to race. Have you done your homework on Madison? The zoning? The fact that our schools were only fully integrated in 1983? The days of blindly complying with your teacher are over, but many people would love to go back to the time when it was like that.
I hear teachers say things like “when I was in school, you would never…” well guess what, when we were in school we were being socialized into a white supremacist system. That system is coming down, and this worries a lot of people, whether they consider themselves woke or not. — Stan Endiliver
That system is coming down
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
School Board chooses Matthew Gutiérrez as next Madison superintendent
Gutiérrez said in the release he was “honored and humbled to be selected,” touting community engagement and support to teachers, students and families as “top priorities.”
“During my visit to Madison, I was extremely impressed with the high level of community involvement and how community members hold education as a top priority,” he said. “I realize that with this role comes a tremendous responsibility, and I will work hard to ensure that we keep our strategic framework goals and our students at the center of what we do.
In an interview Friday, Gutierrez, 39, said he was grateful to even be considered for the job and is excited to move to Madison.
While visiting Wisconsin last week, Gutierrez said he “would be the strongest advocate for every single learner.” He said there’s still work to do in the district, but believes “all the right structures are in place.”
Throughout the summer, Gutierrez said he plans on conducting a “listening tour” to better understand the community and the district. He said he is already looking at dates before June 1 to come to Wisconsin and learn more about Madison.
As part of the listening tour, Gutierrez wants to hear from teachers about what programs and initiatives the district should focus on to prevent teachers from feeling overburdened.
“So many of the decisions that we make in central office directly impact teachers,” he said. “Sometimes we forget because we’ve been out of the classroom for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, that we continue to pile things onto teachers.”
Gutierrez said his base salary will be $250,000, slightly higher than Cheatham’s annual salary of $246,374. He has been superintendent of the Seguin Independent School District, which is outside of San Antonio, Texas, since 2017.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
Matthew Gutiérrez links and additional comments.
Madison Memorial student arrested after trying to bring knife into school
A Memorial High School student was arrested Thursday morning while allegedly trying to bring a “long fix-bladed kitchen knife” into the school, according to the Madison Police Department.
An incident report states a plow driver called 911 after seeing the student walking near the school with the knife around 9:21 a.m.
“The witness said the suspect attempted to conceal the weapon up a sleeve after realizing he was being watched by the plow driver,” the report states.
2005: Gangs and school violence forum: audio and video.
2017: West High Teacher on our disastrous reading results:
“Here’s my data from this year and this is why I’m here:
Of the 65 students plus or minus it kind of changes this year 24 of them are regular ed students.
Another way to say they don’t have an IEP so there is no excuse for that reading intervention in (that group).
12 of those 24 have been enrolled in Madison School since Pre-K kindergarten or kindergarden. 12 students have been in Madison Schools.”
Mission vs organization: leadership of the taxpayer supported ($500m+ annually) Madison School District
Only 8.9% of Madison’s African American high school students are proficient in English, according to 2019 ACT scores. One of every five African American students never graduate. In math, 65% of black students test below basic proficiency, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Not to worry, the district now prohibits teachers from telling parents if their child wants to change genders.
Cheatham’s behavior education plan, Anderson wrote, “led students to conclude that there are no longer any consequences for bad behavior.”
The parents and teachers at Jefferson Middle School know that all too well. They are wondering how a 13-year-old boy who shot another student with a BB gun in December remained in school after two dozen previous incidents, including threatening to “kill everyone in the school.” The district is hunting down the whistleblower who leaked the student’s chronic misbehavior record.
School gag rules hide much of the chaos in the classroom, but no schoolhouse door can contain the disrespect for authority — as when 15 to 20 young teenagers busted up Lakeview Library last March, taunting: “We don’t have to listen to the police.” In December alone, 56 cars were stolen in Madison. Police arrested 15 kids (all but two younger than 17), along with three adults.
The district’s brain-dead, zero-tolerance for the N-word — no matter the educational context — resulted in the summary dismissal of a beloved black security guard and of a Hispanic teacher. The district still hasn’t done right by a dedicated positive behavior coach at Whitehorse Middle School, who school officials threw under the bus even before the district attorney cleared him of all wrong-doing. (The man is white.)
Parents are voting with their feet. MMSD enrollment is expected to decline — even though more people are moving here than any other city in the state. Meanwhile, Sun Prairie is building a second high school. Between the state open enrollment program and private schools, just over 13% of Madison’s children are opting out. Good luck convincing their parents to vote for Madison’s $350 million spending referendums next fall.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
Madison West High School student found with loaded handgun in school, police say
West High School student was arrested Tuesday after he brought a loaded handgun to the Near West Side school, Madison police said.
Tyrese T. Williams, 18, was arrested on a tentative felony charge of possession of a firearm in a school zone, Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain said.
West High’s school resource officer received information Tuesday morning about a student possibly having a gun in the building, DeSpain said. The handgun was found in Williams’ backpack when it was searched, DeSpain said.
Principal Karen Boran said in an email to parents that “response protocols” were put in place when school staff learned about the potential of a firearm.
2005: Gangs and school violence forum: audio and video.
2017: West High Teacher on our disastrous reading results:
“Here’s my data from this year and this is why I’m here:
Of the 65 students plus or minus it kind of changes this year 24 of them are regular ed students.
Another way to say they don’t have an IEP so there is no excuse for that reading intervention in (that group).
12 of those 24 have been enrolled in Madison School since Pre-K kindergarten or kindergarden. 12 students have been in Madison Schools.”
More, here.
Police department spokesman Joel DeSpain said a school resource officer was notified Tuesday morning that a student may have a gun in the building.
DeSpain said the gun was found in Tyrese T. Williams’ backpack. The 18-year-old was arrested for possessing a firearm in a school zone.
According to Tim Lemonds, the school district spokesperson, in an interview with NBC15 News: “The way the principal and her team and especially our educational resource officer – the way they were able to respond quickly and isolate this student and make that area safe for other students, to address the issue, was exactly the way we train.”
A letter was sent to parents by Madison West High School principal Karen Boran.
Why are Madison middle school principals leaving?
Wanted: More Milton McPikes, fewer guilt mongers
Obsessed with identity politics, Madison school board member Ali Muldrow posts on social media an article headlined: “The discomfort of white adults should never take priority over the success of our black and brown students.”
“I didn’t come here to teach those kinds of kids.”
As harmful as that kind of statement is, very few teachers are brazen enough to express their racist thoughts out loud. If teachers express bias at all, particularly White teachers, they do so silently or even unconsciously — implicitly.
Are they also victims of MMSD identity politics?
The clear implication is that school board member Muldrow is, once again, accusing Madison educators of racism most foul.
Hire more educators of color? Fine with us. Go For It!
But if race is so important, why have so many principals of our middle schools failed? Tequila Kurth stepped aside this week as principal of often-violent Jefferson middle school to take “an extended leave of absence.” That makes nine schools at MMSD’s 12 middle schools to experience a change of leadership in the last 3½ years, according to Chris Rickert in the WI State Journal.
Rickert also named Kenya Walker, who quit as principal of Black Hawk Middle School in April 2017 amid suspicions of financial mismanagement, and Sherman Middle School Principal Kristin Foreman the next year after a teacher alleged in a blog post that the school was “in crisis.” Those were the only principals Rickert named.
We reached out to Ms. Muldrow to ask why the leadership turnover at Madison’s middle schools? If these principals are incompetent, why were they appointed? If color is so critical, why did they fail?
Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results: middle school governance edition
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Candidate Quotes from Madison’s 2020 Superintendent Pageant
Behavior Education Plan
Vanden Wyngaard: “Just like in previous districts I have been in, it appears we have a perception issue in the community.”
Gutiérrez: “What I’ve seen is a rather comprehensive plan. I think it may be a little overwhelming for folks. How can we simplify that to be user-friendly, easy to read, easy to follow?”
Thomas: “There’s a group of teachers who are not excited and at the same time there’s a group of kids who are not excited about it, so I’m not exactly sure how we got there. We have to create structures and strategies to build relationships.”
Charter schools
Vanden Wyngaard: “I expect us to partner with charters. I would partner with any other group so why wouldn’t I do that as well? Parents made a decision on where their child could best learn. Our job is to make sure the children of Madison can be successful.”
Gutiérrez: “There are circumstances when public schools partner with a charter system to serve students. Those are very unique circumstances. I believe that we’ve got to continue to find a way to meet the needs of our students in the public school system. It’s just part of our democratic society.”
Thomas: “I’m an advocate of traditional schools. And I’m an advocate of ensuring that every school is of high-quality.”
No budget or reading discussion?
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results: middle school governance edition
In at least two cases, principals left under a cloud.
In 2017, district officials decided not to pursue legal action against former Black Hawk Middle School Principal Kenya Walker, who abandoned her position and oversaw more than $10,000 in spending on the school’s credit card that could not be accounted for. In 2018, Sherman Middle School Principal Kristin Foreman decided to leave after a teacher alleged in a blog post that the school was “in crisis” due to deteriorating student behavior and disrespect for staff.
Tense hallways
Former Jefferson math teacher Mauricio Escobedo said Kurth had “lost control of the school” and described an environment there in which he felt threatened and had “all kinds of racial epithets and insults hurled at me” by students.
According to confidential student records obtained by WISC-TV (Ch. 3), the student in the Dec. 3 incident had been involved in 25 disciplinary incidents this school year prior to his suspension in the BB gun case.
Escobedo was fired on Dec. 20, he said, after pointing out to school leaders that the student who fired the BB gun had previously threatened to “shoot up the school.” Officially, he was let go for failing to earn a state teaching license, he said.
Kurth did not respond to email and Facebook messages seeking comment. Escobedo is one of five teachers who have left Jefferson during the current school year.
While declining to comment on specific employees, district spokesman Tim LeMonds said one of the teachers left for personal family reasons, two for another job in the district, one for “dissatisfaction” with her job and one for not meeting state licensing requirements.
Escobedo, who said he has more than 20 years of teaching experience, said he was properly licensed. But Department of Public Instruction spokesman Benson Gardner said that unless Escobedo “has used another name, he has never held a license to work in a school in Wisconsin.”
Just Wednesday afternoon (01-15-2020) a Jefferson middle school student hospitalized with a concussion after being punched by a classmate. The victim told police he had been bullied for some time by the boy who hit him.
A school staff member said the victim fell to the floor after the initial blow, and was then punched a couple of more times. The employee said the suspect was screaming and knocking over chairs.
Mauricio Escobedo told Blaska’s Policy Werkes:
Mauricio Escobedo told Blaska’s Policy Werkes:
“I was fired and ushered out the back door because I would not allow Tequila Kurth to cover up her dangerous lack of sound disciplinary policies. On Wednesday, yet another child was nearly killed at Jefferson. YOU helped to divulge the fact [earlier this week] that the Jefferson Administration was no longer in control of the school to a wider audience than I could ever reach. For that, I thank you.
And now that Tequila Kurth is gone, the job is remains unfinished. …
The idea that race should be considered before meting out disciplinary consequences (or disciplinary data) is inimical to the foundational principle that Justice is blind. This aberration of America’s justice System must be changed inside of the MMSD from which it was removed by verbal artifice and deception.”
Because of the leadership change, the parent/citizen meeting is rescheduled for 6 p.m. February 6 at the school.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Madison 2020 Superintendent Pageant: Eric Thomas appearance notes
“We have a district that is successful for a group of kids. We have a different district that’s not being successful for a group of kids,” he said of the Madison School District. “That means our organization is uniquely and excellently designed to get the results that we’re presently getting. If we keep doing what we are doing … I can’t imagine why anybody thinks we’re going to get different results.”
Thomas, who goes by his middle name, Eric, said he would not just seek “buy-in” from teachers on programs or initiatives, but rather “co-create” with them changes to improve the district.
If chosen from the pool of three finalists for superintendent, it would be Thomas’ first position leading a school district.
In front of a few dozen people in the theater at La Follette High School, Thomas addressed questions submitted by those in the audience or watching a live-stream of the meeting.
More on Eric Thomas.
Certain events may be streamed (and archived), here.
Despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
No safe space for reformers at Madison’s Jefferson middle school? “One can create the greatest safe space on earth here in Madison but when they go out in the world you are killing these children, they won’t be able to function out in the world which lacks such safe spaces.”
“Teachers are very very afraid.” — former teacher*
Parents are mobilizing for a showdown at Madison’s Jefferson middle school, which they describe as ruled by virtue-signaling administrators and out-of-control students.
The flash point was on December 3 when a 13-year-old boy shot a girl with a BB gun outside from a bus window. The student had remained in school despite a history of transgressions, include threatening to shoot up the school “and kill everyone” three months earlier.
* Former teacher Mauricio Escobedo told Blaska Policy Werkes that students at Jefferson, located on the same campus as James Madison Memorial high school on Madison’s far west side, must be bribed with candy and potato chips to follow instructions because there are no penalties for disobedience.
School district spokesman Tim LeMonds seemed to acknowledge problems at Jefferson. He told the Werkes: “We’ve been reviewing the culture and climate of that school for a few months now and we are working with the leadership at that school.”
Despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
I raised my hand and said, ‘Well, I don’t agree. I don’t have skin in the game. I’m not white.’ The educational philosophy of the school district is focused on feelings of safety not on discipline.”
Mr. Escobedo told this blog: “One can create the greatest safe space on earth here in Madison but when they go out in the world you are killing these children, they won’t be able to function out in the world which lacks such safe spaces.”
Escobedo feels that school administration blamed him for leaking the disciplinary file of the December 3 shooter to Channel 3000, which he denies. “Instead of focusing on safety policies, school principal Tequila Kurth wrote memos that threatened the school employee/s who divulged this public information.” Kurth is in her second school year as principal at Jefferson.
LeMonds, public information officer for the school district, told Blaska Policy Works no one has been accused of leaking the information. “That was federally protected information, so the district has been actively investigating the release of that record. We haven’t even narrowed it down to a point where we can interview folks.”
Escobedo said: “I come from business and if you’re black or white, I don’t care what race, if you’re hired at McDonald’s and you burn the food, they’re going to fire you because you are not getting the job done. But here in this school, here in Madison WI and in the United States, schools are saying ‘alright students you are failing but we’re going to protect you from failure. We’re not going give you an F but draw you a happy face for effort.’”
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
2020 Madison Superintendent Pageant: Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard
She also highlighted the importance of having teachers know the cognitive process of how children learn to read to improve literacy outcomes.
When asked about school-based police officers, a divisive topic in the Madison School District, Vanden Wyngaard said she doesn’t have a problem with police being in schools but thinks they should only be involved if a felony-level crime is suspected.
She also spoke to giving teachers the ability to “fail forward” when they make mistakes, allowing them to learn and adjust.
To increase the number of teachers of color, Vanden Wyngaard said the district can try to recruit directly from historically black colleges, expand a district program that encourages minority students to become teachers and change the culture of the district to be more welcoming for teachers of color.
People can provide online feedback for each candidate until 8 a.m. Friday. For Vanden Wyngaard, the website is: mmsd.org/wyngaard.
More on Vanden Wyngaard
Certain events may be streamed (and archived), here.
Despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
Parent union forming to combat power of public school teachers unions; “The tyranny of low expectations”
Keri Rodrigues and Alma Marquez said they were so appalled by the low standards of America’s public school teachers unions, they formed the National Parents Union (NPU), so families could have a greater say in their children’s education.
Rodrigues, a mother of three from Boston, and Marquez, a mother of one from Los Angeles, are no strangers to public-sector unions. Rodrigues worked for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), while Marquez grew up in a union household and worked for Green Dot Public Schools — a public charter organization
“I worked in labor, working for the SEIU, and I spent a big chunk of my career in politics,” Rodrigues told Fox News. “But at the same time, I’m a single mom with three little boys. My oldest son has Asperger’s and ADHD. So we knew from a very young age that he was going to need help.”
Her son had been suspended from kindergarten 36 times and was supposed to be aided by an individualized education program (IEP). Instead, Rodrigues said she was met with indifference and ineptitude from instructors who were supposed to be helping her boy.
“An emphasis on adult employment”.
“The tyranny of low expectations.
2020 Madison school board election: Candidate “suspends campaign”
When he initially filed papers to run, Strong said he considers school safety and racial disparities in discipline and achievement to be the top issues facing MMSD.
“We have to make sure that our schools are safe and that they’re safe learning environments for our kids to learn and for our teachers to teach in,” Wayne Strong said. He stressed the importance of “tackling the achievement gap and just making sure that all of our students are given the best possible opportunity to get the quality education they deserve.”
The end of his campaign leaves Seat 6 as the only contested election, with three candidates running. Incumbent Kate Toews is not running for re-election, leaving newcomers Maia Pearson, Christina Gomez Schmidt and Karen Ball set for a Feb. 18 primary election. The top two vote-getters will move onto the April general election.
Curiously, this has occurred several times in recent years: Ed Hughes, after 3 unopposed campaigns withdrew from a competitive 2017 campaign after the primary!
Similarly, Sarah Manski withdrew after the 2013 primary…
Mr Hughes name resurfaces occasionally, lobbying against parent and school choice in the form of the 2019 Arbor school charter proposal and in the taxpayer supported Madison school administration’s 2020 spending increase referendum slides.
Finally, despite spending far more than most K-12 school districts, and tolerating long term, disastrous reading results, Mr. Hughes voted against the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school (2011).
Minnesota teachers union opposes constitutional amendment to address achievement gap
The largest organization representing Minnesota educators announced Wednesday that it opposes a plan to change the state Constitution in an effort to narrow the state’s persistent academic achievement gap.
Education Minnesota, the union representing 80,000 members who work in pre-K and K-12 schools and higher-education institutions, announced its opposition as the authors of the proposal launched a public effort to woo support for their “out-of-the-box” idea.
Alan Page, a former Minnesota Supreme Court justice, and Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, want to make quality public education a civil right for all children. To do that, they propose amending the Constitution’s current language on education, which has remained largely the same since it was written in 1857.
But the teachers union argues that the change would pave the way for taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools, which they’ve long opposed.
“The public schools paid for by the taxpayers should be available to every Minnesota family no matter where they are from, how they pray, whether their children have special needs, or who they love,” Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said in a written statement.
The proposal would remove the mandate for a uniform system of public education, creating even wider inequities between wealthy and poor districts, Specht wrote in a series of tweets.
Related: “An emphasis on adult employment“.
Madison School Board races starting to emerge as filing deadline approaches
For the past seven months, Strong has been a program associate with the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Strong said in an interview Thursday he considers school safety and racial disparities in discipline and achievement to be the top issues facing MMSD.
“We have to make sure that our schools are safe and that they’re safe learning environments for our kids to learn and for our teachers to teach in,” Strong said. He stressed the importance of “tackling the achievement gap and just making sure that all of our students are given the best possible opportunity to get the quality education they deserve.”
He said he dislikes having to choose a seat to run for in Madison’s at-large system, but determined Seat 7 was the “most comfortable” for him at this time. As someone who had children go through Madison schools and will have grandchildren in them in the future, Strong said he thinks he can provide leadership on the board and that he has a “passion for education.”
Vander Meulen said Thursday she was “glad to have a challenger” so that voters can make a choice based on what they value. She said the board’s three jobs are to make a budget, listen to constituents and write policies — and that they need to do more on the last of those.
“We really at a basic level need to figure how to make sure students are gaining the literacy skills that they need to be successful students,” she said.
Pearson wants to make sure students are able to gain academic and social-emotional skills, support teachers in anti-racist work, and increase school and community collaboration. She said school safety is the biggest challenge the district is facing.
Madison taxpayers spend far more than most K-12 school districts. Yet, we have long tolerated disastrousreading results.
Madison K-12 administrators are planning a substantial tax & spending increase referendum for 2020.
Madison School District projects loss of 1,100 students over next five years, yet 2020 referendum planning continues.
Madison School Board approves purchase of $4 million building for special ed programs
2013: What will be different, this time? 2019: Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison Experience
Commentary on 2020 Madison School Board Election Candidates
For the past seven months, Strong has been a program associate with the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Strong said in an interview Thursday he considers school safety and racial disparities in discipline and achievement to be the top issues facing MMSD.
“We have to make sure that our schools are safe and that they’re safe learning environments for our kids to learn and for our teachers to teach in,” Strong said. He stressed the importance of “tackling the achievement gap and just making sure that all of our students are given the best possible opportunity to get the quality education they deserve.”
He said he dislikes having to choose a seat to run for in Madison’s at-large system, but determined Seat 7 was the “most comfortable” for him at this time. As someone who had children go through Madison schools and will have grandchildren in them in the future, Strong said he thinks he can provide leadership on the board and that he has a “passion for education.”
Vander Meulen said Thursday she was “glad to have a challenger” so that voters can make a choice based on what they value. She said the board’s three jobs are to make a budget, listen to constituents and write policies — and that they need to do more on the last of those.
“I’m choosing to run again because I want to continue to be a voice for the voiceless,” Vander Meulen said, citing the achievement gap and graduation rate for students with disabilities. “Things aren’t changing and they need to and the only way that happens is by speaking up and advocating.”
Notes and links on the 2020 Madison School Board Election.
This, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts and tolerating long term, disastrous reading results.
Maia Pearson becomes first newcomer to announce 2020 Madison School Board campaign
The Madison School Board seat left open by incumbent Kate Toews choosing not to run for re-election has a candidate.
Maia Pearson, a Madison native who has three children in Madison schools, will run for Seat 6. She filed her declaration of candidacy and campaign registration statement with the city clerk Monday and announced her campaign with state Rep. Shelia Stubbs, who is also a Dane County Board supervisor.
Pearson said at her announcement that she “really, truly cares about our children,” according to a video shared on Facebook by School Board member Ananda Mirilli.
“Me running is not just a personal endeavor, but moreso because I really want to make sure the children of Madison have everything necessary to succeed,” Pearson said. “I am a firm believer that every child is special, every child can succeed, all they need is everyone to come with them to make sure that they grow.”
Pearson was one of 29 applicants for Seat 2 earlier this year when Mary Burke resigned.
The board appointed Savion Castro to that seat. He is running for re-election to the seat and is currently unopposed. Incumbent Nicki Vander Meulen is also running for re-election to Seat 7, and is also unopposed.
In her application to the board in July, Pearson wrote that the district “faces critical issues in safeguarding our children, especially children of color, the invalidation of parents of color, and the ineffective training of the adults working directly and indirectly with students”
“There must be improved teacher training to ensure that teachers meet the needs of a multicultural student body and work effectively with parents of diverse cultures and races,” she wrote. “These and other proactive approaches are crucial to ensuring that students of color and different backgrounds feel safe and secure at Madison schools and that parents of color are validated and their concerns for their children’s safety heard, respected, and acted upon. It goes without question, after all, that feeling safe at school is a prerequisite to performing well and that we want all of our students to achieve to the full extent of their abilities.”
Stubbs offered her endorsement during Monday’s announcement.
“Maia is a young lady who is going to be a change leader,” Stubbs said.
Madison taxpayers spend far more than most K-12 school districts. Yet, we have long tolerated disastrousreading results.
Madison K-12 administrators are planning a substantial tax & spending increase referendum for 2020.
Madison School District projects loss of 1,100 students over next five years, yet 2020 referendum planning continues.
Madison School Board approves purchase of $4 million building for special ed programs
2013: What will be different, this time? 2019: Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison Experience
Commentary on taxpayer supported Madison K-12 Curriculum
West High School senior Miles Mullens, who is enrolled in the school’s Wisconsin First Nations class this semester, said the class has felt like the first time his history classes have been “honest about” what colonizers did to Native Americans.
“I thought I was a quote-unquote woke person, someone who had already learned things and looked at things from a (variety of) points of view and someone who could go into a situation and take other people’s perspective seriously,” Miles, who is white, said. “I went into the class and I was just completely wrong.”
Ask many of the students in these classes, from fourth grade up through high school, what they’re learning and you’ll hear a consistent phrase: “the truth.”
That was repeated multiple times by students learning about history — specifically, the history of non-white people and how white people had harmed them in various ways, from colonization to slavery to Jim Crow.
“Most stories don’t tell the truth,” said Sandburg fourth-grader Oliver. “We’re actually telling the truth about the real things that happened in history.”
Teaching beyond the textbooks already on their shelves means doing work outside of the classroom to identify the best resources.
Moe said finding resources teachers can “trust” is among the bigger challenges for those looking to diversify a curriculum.
“Textbooks have a lot wrong with them. There’s faulty facts in there, there’s one-sided perspectives in there, but someone has done some type of research and put that together,” he said. “To go out and find documents and resources you can use that you can also trust is hard.”
To prepare for the changing environment, education schools are focusing on social justice and equity lenses for their teachers. Tim Slekar, dean of Edgewood’s school of education, called it the “heart and soul of teacher and education curriculum” at his school.
“If we’re creating a place that’s culturally sensitive to more children, then those children are more likely to be willing to participate and learn and be engaged,” Slekar said.
Warnecke, who has been at various Madison schools for 12 years in a variety of positions, said it took her experience teaching in Chicago schools to open her eyes to the importance of teaching diverse perspectives and reaching students facing major challenges outside of school. The practice has “so many layers” to it, she said, and doing it successfully everywhere will take time — but she’s sure it can be done.
How might these initiatives address students moving through (and graduating from) the Madison schools who cannot read?
Teachers Pay High Fees for Retirement Funds. Unions Are Partly to Blame.
Anne Tergesen and Gretchen Morgenson:
The pitch from the president of the Indian River County teachers union couldn’t have been clearer.
Liz Cannon, who heads the Indian River chapter of the Florida Education Association, urged union members to buy retirement investments from Valic Financial Advisors Inc. through a firm owned by the union. That way “we also make money,” she said in a November 2017 newsletter, through regular dividends.
What Ms. Cannon didn’t mention was that investments from Valic, a unit of giant insurance company American International Group Inc., can carry high costs that may translate to a smaller nest egg when teachers retire.
The setup is one of an array of similar deals in which unions and other groups get income from endorsements of investment products and services—often at the expense of teachers and other municipal employees.
The ties help explain why many local-government workers continue to pay relatively high retirement-plan costs, while fees in corporate-based retirement plans are often lower and have been falling for years.
At issue are 403(b) retirement savings plans for teachers and 457 plans for government workers—variations on the 401(k) plans many companies offer. About $900 billion was held in 403(b) plans for public-school teachers and 457 plans at the end of June, according to the Investment Company Institute, a mutual-fund industry trade group.
In the crowded market, an endorsement from a union or municipal organization or affiliate can help an investment-product provider stand out. It also can give the provider’s sales agents access to union meetings, teachers’ lounges, benefit-enrollment fairs and professional conferences to pitch retirement and other products.
The now retired Madison Teachers, Inc. Executive Director served on the WPS Board of Directors for some time. WPS provided health insurance (one of several choices) to taxpayer supported Madison School District teachers.
Dear teachers, most of the popular lessons you found online aren’t worth using
Amber Northern & Michael Petrilli:
As we were putting the final touches on our new report, The Supplemental Curriculum Bazaar: Is What’s Online Any Good?, Amazon unveiled a “new storefront” called Amazon Ignite. The site will allow educators to earn money by publishing—online, of course—their original educational resources (lesson plans, worksheets, games, and more).
The e-commerce titan’s entry into the curricular marketplace is obviously motivated by a perceived market opportunity—and that’s not wrong. The vast majority of teachers are supplementing their core curriculum or don’t have a core curriculum to start with, so it’s no surprise that they often frequent the online arena to obtain the materials with which to meet their instructional needs.
In fact, recent studies by RAND found that nearly all teachers report using the Internet to source instructional materials, and many of them do so quite often. For example, 55 percent of English language arts (ELA) teachers said they used Teachers Pay Teachers for curriculum materials at least once a week. That site reports that one billion resources have been downloaded—a massive number, to be sure.
Yet we know almost nothing about the quality of such supplementary materials. Although several organizations have stepped up to offer impartial reviews of full curriculum products, to our knowledge there’s no equivalent when it comes to add-on resources. Therefore, we set out to answer a simple question: Are popular websites supplying teachers with high-quality supplemental materials?
2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before
2013: Reading Recovery in Madison….. 28% to 58%; Lags National Effectiveness Average….
12 of those 24 have been enrolled in Madison School since Pre-K kindergarten or kindergarden. 12 students have been in Madison Schools.
They have High attendance. They have been in the same (you know) feeder school they have not had high mobility. There is no excuse for 12 of my students to be reading at the first second or third grade level and that’s where they’re at and I’m angry and I’m not the only one that’s angry.
The teachers are angry because we are being held accountable for things that we didn’t do at the high school level. Of those 24 students, 21 of them have been enrolled in Madison for four or more years.
Of those 24 students one is Caucasian the rest of them identify as some other ethnic group.
I am tired of the district playing what I called whack-a-mole, (in) another words a problem happens at Cherokee boom we bop it down and we we fix it temporarily and then something at Sherman or something at Toki or something at Faulk and we bop it down and its quiet for awhile but it has not been fixed on a system-wide level and that’s what has to change.
To ‘Get Reading Right,’ We Need To Talk About What Teachers Actually Do
In recent months, thanks largely to journalist Emily Hanford, it’s become clear that the prevailing approach to teaching kids how to decipher words isn’t backed by evidence. An abundance of research shows that many children—perhaps most—won’t learn to “decode” written text unless they get systematic instruction in phonics. As Hanford has shown, teachers may think they’re teaching phonics, but many also encourage children to guess at words from pictures or context. The result is that many never learn to sound out words—and in later years, when they encounter more difficult text, they hit a wall.
Hanford’s work has drawn well-deserved attention. And recently Education Week, a prominent national publication, released a special issue called “Getting Reading Right” that reveals, among other disturbing findings, that 75% of teachers say they encourage students to guess when they come to a word they don’t know.
Mission vs. Organization: Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.
While decades pass, with no substantive change in Madison’s reading results (despite substantial spending increases), perhaps we might learn from a successful inner city Milwaukee institution: Henry Tyson’s St. Marcus School.
More, here.
Mission vs. Organization: Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results
This meeting was held at Lakeview public library. Asking attendees to leave would have been a violation of the Madison Public Library’s rules of use, which require that “meetings be free and open to the general public at all times.” pic.twitter.com/BRgxOnbSmk
— Chan Stroman (@eduphilia) December 13, 2019
It was nonetheless made quite apparent that we “non-community” members, and our efforts to engage and participate as concerned residents of the district, were unwelcome. pic.twitter.com/yArcWvoqAx
— Chan Stroman (@eduphilia) December 13, 2019
The November meeting did draw some reading experts — including UW-Madison cognitive neuroscientist Mark Seidenberg and Madison reading advocate Laurie Frost – who have been publicly critical of the district’s teaching approach to reading. When they spoke, Morateck emphasized that the meeting was meant for parents, not the community at large, although she did not ask anyone to leave.
“The point of this was to bring in the community and to hear what the community wants to hear,” Morateck said. “And when I say community, I mean parents.”
But Klein complained about this distinction, saying she was glad to see people who simply care about how reading is being taught in the district attend the meeting.
Frost called it a “contrived restriction” on a community meeting. “It’s time to stop playing games, and to actually pay attention to the science and to actually impact the data, to look at the data and take [it] seriously, and to put aside our adult politics about whole language, phonics, whatever, and make sure the kids are learning.”
At the meeting, Seidenberg said that what the community wants is a forum to talk about their concerns.
“I’ve been here in Madison since 2001, and have never had a discussion with anyone from the Madison Metropolitan School District about any policies related to achievement gaps, dyslexia, language differences, bilingual background, speaking a different dialect,” he said. “And so there’s a certain amount of frustration when you say, ‘We’re really interested in these criteria, and we’re really going to look at them seriously.’”
2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before
2013: Reading Recovery in Madison….. 28% to 58%; Lags National Effectiveness Average….
12 of those 24 have been enrolled in Madison School since Pre-K kindergarten or kindergarden. 12 students have been in Madison Schools.
They have High attendance. They have been in the same (you know) feeder school they have not had high mobility. There is no excuse for 12 of my students to be reading at the first second or third grade level and that’s where they’re at and I’m angry and I’m not the only one that’s angry.
The teachers are angry because we are being held accountable for things that we didn’t do at the high school level. Of those 24 students, 21 of them have been enrolled in Madison for four or more years.
Of those 24 students one is Caucasian the rest of them identify as some other ethnic group.
I am tired of the district playing what I called whack-a-mole, (in) another words a problem happens at Cherokee boom we bop it down and we we fix it temporarily and then something at Sherman or something at Toki or something at Faulk and we bop it down and its quiet for awhile but it has not been fixed on a system-wide level and that’s what has to change.
Teachers and Low Expecations
Julie Marburger was a school teacher at Cedar Creek, Texas, a suburb of Austin. She posted this on social media (H/T Greg L.) shortly before the end of the 2019-2020 school year:
I left work early today after an incident with a parent left me unable emotionally to continue for the day. I have already made the decision to leave teaching at the end of this year, and today, I don’t know if I will make it even that long. Parents have become far too disrespectful, and their children are even worse. Administration always seems to err on the side of keeping the parent happy, which leaves me with no way to do the job I was hired to do…teach kids.
I am including photos that I took in my classroom over the past two days. This is how my classroom regularly looks after my students spend all day there. Keep in mind that many of the items damaged or destroyed by my students are my personal possessions or I purchased myself, because I have NO classroom budget.
12 of those 24 have been enrolled in Madison School since Pre-K kindergarten or kindergarden. 12 students have been in Madison Schools.
They have High attendance. They have been in the same (you know) feeder school they have not had high mobility. There is no excuse for 12 of my students to be reading at the first second or third grade level and that’s where they’re at and I’m angry and I’m not the only one that’s angry.
The teachers are angry because we are being held accountable for things that we didn’t do at the high school level. Of those 24 students, 21 of them have been enrolled in Madison for four or more years.
How Are Chicago Public Schools’ Teachers Getting Post-Strike Makeup Days Off?
The Chicago Teachers Union did not budge during its 11-day strike.
“We should return to work in the schools pending one thing – and that one thing is a return-to-work agreement,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said on the 11th and last day of the strike on Oct. 31.
The union and Mayor Lori Lightfoot agreed to make up five instructional days. But now, not three weeks later, Pritzker Elementary School’s assistant principal sent a letter to parents about the Nov. 27, Jan. 2, and Jan. 3 makeup days, stating, “We anticipate a need or substitutes to cover the classes of teachers who have made advance plans for those days and will not be in attendance in school.”
The letter called on parents themselves to step in as substitute teachers. And principals say it is happening district-wide.
Kozlov asked Sharkey about all this.
Related: an emphasis on adult employment.
Grading inconsistencies ‘not new’ with West ‘grading floor,’ Madison School District officials say
With no Madison Metropolitan School District policy on grading at the four comprehensive high schools, administrators and teachers have room to implement their own practices.
Bottom-up decisions can help get buy-in from the teachers and staff carrying out any changes, but also mean that changes happen on different timelines, like the recent change at West High School to institute “grading floors” for its freshmen students. While that seemingly creates an inconsistency among the high schools, MMSD executive director of secondary programming Cindy Green pointed out that consistency in grading hasn’t existed here for years.
“Because there is no board policy, teachers right now have the autonomy to develop their own grading practices and their own determination around assignment weights,” Green said. “It’s not new.”
Madison West high school has conducted several experiments over the years, including:
“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) east, especially if you are Black or Hispanic.
Rural Wisconsin STEM teachers build connections to researchers at UW event
Science and math teacher Jessica Dennis, who represented Washington Island, called her island district a “magical place” where students don’t just learn about wood or Lyme disease on paper. Instead, they have direct access to wooded areas that directly influence what they’re learning based on their surroundings.
In the Pecatonica Area School District, high school science teacher Jacob Roberts said he enjoys the flexibility to change up his lesson plans day to day in a small district. For instance, he teaches climate change by referencing rates of flooding in the Pecatonica River, and “the students get that right away. It’s not political to them.”
“Where you live should not limit your opportunity,” Roberts said. “Sometimes we can’t afford some of the expensive scientific experiments without grants … so we need to continually seek out ways to get students in contact with technology and opportunities and re-instill in them that they’re capable of great things regardless of where they live.”
Madison West High School to test ‘grading floor’ as part of district examination of freshman grading
In an effort to keep students who fail early in their high school careers from falling completely out of school, ninth grade teachers at Madison’s West High School are planning to assign classroom grades of no less than 40%, eliminate extra credit and allow up to 90% credit for late work in required classes.
Madison’s largest high school plans to implement several changes to grading practices this year — primarily meant to keep freshman on-track to graduate during a time when slips in academic performance are not unusual — while other changes school-wide are being sought to create consistent expectations for grading.
Among the changes sought this year for all ninth grade core classes, which are required courses in English, math, science, social studies and physical education, is the idea of a “grading floor,” which would mean an assignment could receive no less than 40% regardless of whether it is completed. A 40% would still result in a failing grade.
West High Principal Karen Boran said moving to a grading floor in the required freshman classes could prevent a “super F” — assignments and tests receiving a zero, which can drag down students’ overall average grades and prevent them from catching up in a class.
“Traditionally, grades are given out on a 100-point grading scale, so you have 60 points to get it wrong, to fail. You have 40 points to get it right,” Boran said. “Once you get a couple of F’s, you can’t come back from that.”
Mike Hernandez, the district’s chief of high schools, said grading floors are also being tested at freshman classes in the other high schools, such as U.S. History at La Follette High School and algebra at East High School.
Madison West high school has conducted several experiments over the years, including:
“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) east, especially if you are Black or Hispanic.
Transparency in Madison’s $500M+ Taxpayer Supported K-12 School District: Open Records Suppression edition
An anonymous Madison School District resident is suing the district over its refusal to provide records in response to 26 requests made over a three-and-a-half month period earlier this year.
The John Doe is being represented by attorney Tom Kamenick, the president and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project. The lawsuit filed Nov. 14 in Dane County Circuit Court asks the court to mandate the release of the records and award Doe at least $100 for each of the 48 counts it alleges against the district in addition to attorney fees.
According to the lawsuit, between July 10 and Oct. 31 Doe filed requests seeking documents related to administration’s weekly updates with board members, curriculum plans, school improvement plans and the annual seclusion and restraint report, among other topics.
Despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
The School District Administration is planning a substantial tax and spending increase referendum for the fall, 2020 election.
The records requested between July and October have included such things as the “weekly update” document provided by the district to School Board members; School Improvement Plans for the 2019-20 school year; the district’s K-12 sequential curriculum plan; the “Inequitable Distribution of Teachers Report,” all reports regarding notification and reporting following use of seclusion or physical restraint; annual licensure certifications; among other documents.
Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said the state open records law clearly states that no request can be denied because of anonymity, and that the district’s denials “are clearly illegal.”
“It may be that the district is relying on a case decided a few years back in which a court agreed that a custodian could deny a request from a known harasser,” Lueders said. But that does not give MSD the right to reject anonymous requests.”
He said the district should admit it was wrong and settle the lawsuit, “otherwise taxpayers will be on the hook for legal costs that should never have been incurred.”
An interview with Madison School Board Member Ali Muldrow
Blaska parried: “Your friend Ananda Mirilli … accused me of creating the system she is trying to undo. … [But] the system we have is so great that people are trying to get in illegally … because they know you can succeed in America if you work. I’m afraid we’re telling kids … it’s the teachers fault, it is the system’s fault, you are a victim therefore you cannot be expected to be accountable for your actions.”
Rather than address the substance, Ms. Muldrow announced that she had just been triggered, the default mode of social justice warriors everywhere.
“I want to correct you,” Ms. Muldrow lectured. “Ananda’s name is pronounced “Ah-NAHN-duh.”
Blaska speaks Wisconsin, apparently, which defaults to a flat-A pronunciation. Wisconsin pronounces Aunt, for example, as “Ant” instead of “AWEnt.” My bad. Apparently, I had just disrespected a Latina immigrant from Brazil by mispronouncing her name. Blaska blames his Midwestern parents, who apparently have been de-listed from the Greatest Generation.
B-Flat or be square
B-Flat or be square
Blaska had committed a micro-aggression and Ali must scold him: “You also called her ‘my friend’ and that is a flattening of our relationship. Ah-NAHN-duh is a fellow school board member, elected the same time I was.”
“You’re not friends?” Blaska sputtered. (Ali and Ah-NAHN-duh did campaign as a team, with both their names and likenesses on the same signage.)
Muldrow: “I think it just flattens a multi-dimensional relationship.”
Blaska apologized. “The last thing I want is to flatten a multi-dimensional relationship.”
Somewhat related: Peter Thiel on the end of the Computer Age:
Madison schools drop winter reading and math test for elementary and middle school students
Given this, it was decided the winter MAP test is something the district doesn’t really need, Peterson said.
Instead, district officials want to move to more formative assessments, which generally cover shorter time frames of learning, can come in more informal manners, such as asking students by a show of hands if they understand a concept, and gives a teacher a better ability to determine what areas individual students needs further help on, Peterson said.
“We’re working to continue to build up information that teachers can use right away in their classrooms,” Peterson said. “While testing fatigue plays in the background, that’s not a driver of what this decision was.”
Chicago Teachers Strike Should Be a Warning
The city of Chicago offered the teachers union a 16% base-pay raise extending over five years, but that wasn’t enough for the CTU. No, they want a 15% raise over three years. They also want every school to have nurses, social workers, and librarians, along with more special education paras and personnel.
But it’s not about the money. No, these purer-than-the-driven-snow professionals care only about the children. Said one striking teacher:
“This strike is not about money. This strike is over better schools for our own children and our students.”
Right. And if you believe that, let me give you a sweet deal on the Willis Tower. I’ll even throw in Wrigley Field, too.
Chicago taxpayers spend 15 to 25% less per student than Madison, depending on the district documents reviewed.
Former WEAC leader and longtime teachers advocate Morris Andrews dies
Andrews became executive director of WEAC, the state’s largest teachers union, in 1972. At the time, the association of 40,000 teachers had little involvement in state politics or lobbying efforts.
But that soon changed. Andrews was considered a force to be reckoned with in the statehouse halls and advocated for teachers, bus drivers, aides and other unionized staff.
When Andrews retired for health reasons in 1992, WEAC had grown to 62,000 members, a 175-person staff and a $10 million-a-year budget.
John Matthews, the head of Madison Teachers Inc. from 1968 to January 2016, worked closely with Andrews and called him “a very knowledgeable, very skillful labor leader.”
“Every teacher since 1970 owes him a debt of gratitude because of their employment being much more enjoyable and much more profitable,” Matthews said. “Their employment security was in great part a result of his work.”
On Friday, Thompson called him “by far the best executive director of any teachers’ union, any teachers movement in the United States, before or now.”
Notes and links: WEAC, Mo Andrews and John Matthews.
A 2013 interview with Mo Andrews
Deja vu: 2008 – 2019 Credit for non MadIson School District Courses and Adult Employment
To help students make the transition to a higher-intensity setting, two Madison School District teachers spend time at Goodman South instructing courses with solely STEM Academy students and some with a mix of traditional college and high school students.
“We thought it was really important to have high school teachers be part of the program, teachers that kind of know 16-year-olds well and may already have relationships with students,” Green said.
MATC also has two resource specialists working with the students at Goodman South, acting as academic and career advisers.
Green said the district and college have been intentional about structuring the student schedules so they are on campus between about 8 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. This is designed so students can continue to participate in sports or after-school, extra-curricular activities, she said.
“We felt it was important for them to still have a connection to their home school,” Green said.
Miranda, the La Follette High School student, makes it back to the Southeast Side school three days a week to participate in three different clubs.
“I just felt like I left part of my high school experience or teenage experience back there, even though I have friends here,” Miranda said. “At the same time, I really do like this environment because it does fit with being mature and having your own independence.”
2008 (!) A
history of parent attempts to implement credit for non taxpayer supported Madison School District credit.
“The district and the union also have quarreled over the role of MTI members in online learning for seven years. Under the new agreement, ANY (my emphasis) instruction of district students will be supervised by Madison teachers. The deal doesn’t change existing practice but confirms that that practice will continue.”
You are quite new to the MMSD. I am EXTREMELY disappointed that you would “cave in” to MTI regarding a long-standing quarrel it has had with the MMSD without first taking the time to get input from ALL affected parties, i.e., students and their parents as well as teachers who might not agree with Matthews on this issue. Does this agreement deal only with online learning or ALL non-MMSD courses (e.g., correspondence ones done by mail; UW and MATC courses not taken via the YOP)? Given we have been waiting 7 years to resolve this issue, there was clearly no urgent need for you to do so this rapidly and so soon after coming on board. The reality is that it is an outright LIE that the deal you just struck with MTI is not a change from the practice that existed 7 years ago when MTI first demanded a change in unofficial policy. I have copies of student transcripts that can unequivocally PROVE that some MMSD students used to be able to receive high school credit for courses they took elsewhere even when the MMSD offered a comparable course. These courses include high school biology and history courses taken via UW-Extension, high school chemistry taken via Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development, and mathematics, computer science, and history courses taken at UW-Madison outside of the YOP. One of these transcripts shows credit for a course taken as recently as fall, 2005; without this particular 1/2 course credit, this student would have been lacking a course in modern US history, a requirement for a high school diploma from the State of Wisconsin.
The MMSD BOE was well aware that they had never written and approved a clear policy regarding this matter, leaving each school in the district deciding for themselves whether or not to approve for credit non-MMSD courses. They were well aware that Madison West HAD been giving many students credit in the past for non-MMSD courses. The fact is that the BOE voted in January, 2007 to “freeze” policy at whatever each school had been doing until such time as they approved an official policy. Rainwater then chose to ignore this official vote of the BOE, telling the guidance departments to stop giving students credit for such courses regardless of whether they had in the past. The fact is that the BOE was in the process of working to create a uniform policy regarding non-MMSD courses last spring. As an employee of the BOE, you should not have signed an agreement with MTI until AFTER the BOE had determined official MMSD policy on this topic. By doing so, you pre-empted the process.
An emphasis on adult employment
COMMENTARY on Madison k-12 teacher compensatioN: 2 + 2.44 + benefits
In addition to a higher base wage, the district has said that, on the average, employees will receive another 2% salary increase this year based on a salary schedule that awards experience and education.
But MTI has said about 1,000 employees, including some of the lowest paid, won’t receive more money through the salary schedule, arguing a full base-wage bump is necessary to keep up with the cost of living.
The agreement won’t take effect until approved by both the union members and the School Board, according to the Facebook post.
“An emphasis on adult employment”.
Yet, we have long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Years ago, a senior Madison teacher mentioned to me that the local union leadership traded benefit growth for reduced salary increases, which affected younger teachers.
The Madison school district has benefited greatly from a growing property tax base – supported by a massive federal taxpayer electronic medical record subsidy (nearly $40B since 2011!). Will that continue? What happens if things change?
Mr Bernanke’s unorthodox “cash for trash” scheme, otherwise known as quantitative easing, drove up asset prices and bailed out baby boomers at the profound political cost of pricing out millennials from that most divisive of asset markets, property. This has left the former comfortable, but the latter with a fragile stake in the society they are supposed to build.
As we look towards the 2020 US presidential election, could Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s leftwing politics become the anthem of choice for America’s millennials?
But before we look forward, it is worth going back a bit. The 2008 crash itself didn’t destroy wealth, but rather revealed how much wealth had already been destroyed by poor decisions taken in the boom. This underscored the truism that the worst of investments are often taken in the best of times.
Mr Bernanke, a keen student of the 1930s, understood that a “balance sheet recession” must be combated by reflating assets. By exchanging old bad loans on the banks’ balance sheets with good new money, underpinned by negative interest rates, the Fed drove asset prices skywards. Higher valuations fixed balance sheets and ultimately coaxed more spending and investment. However, such “hyper-trickle-down” economics also meant that wealth inequality was not the unintended consequence, but the objective, of policy.
The results of money printing can be seen in Venezuela.
Providence teachers push back against harsh report on schools
Providence teachers describe a climate of negativity, an air of uncertainty and a culture of blame hovering over their district since the release of a report by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy this summer on the state of the schools.
But for them, the anxiety caused by the scathing report, the impending state takeover and what they see as a barrage of criticism aimed at them in the media, fades away when they greet their students.
“The moment we step on the front step of that school, that’s it, you leave it there,” said Cynthia Robles, a special education collaborative teacher at Roger Williams Middle School. “You have to leave that negativity at the door, because the kids are depending on you.”
Six educators from around the district shared this week what it’s like to be a teacher in the thick of a national controversy over their schools.
“It doesn’t affect me one bit, one bit,” said Allison Campbell, a kindergarten dual-language English teacher at Carl G. Lauro Elementary School, who said she always gets swept up in her students and the pace of the school day.
But about 100 teachers have resigned this year, some because they were recruited by other districts and others because of the mounting pressure on Providence teachers in the wake of the report, said Ed German, dean of students at Hope High School.
“People don’t want to be associated with education in Providence,” he said. “We’ve lost good administrators. We’ve lost good teachers
Richard Zimman (2009 – then Ripon, WI Superintendent):
Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.”
Two Madisons: The Education and Opportunity Gap in Wisconsin’s Fastest Growing City
At Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), there exist two distinct school systems.
Despite its economic growth, low-income families in Madison are more likely to stay poor for their entire lives.
While 60% of white students at MMSD are proficient or higher on the Forward exam, only 9.8% of African Americans are proficient. This achievement gap is worse than Milwaukee Public Schools.
While Hispanic proficiency is higher than that for African Americans, large gaps remain.
21% of African Americans and 18% of Hispanic students in MMSD do not graduate from high school within five years compared to just 6% of white students.
African American and low-income students are more likely to be in schools with significantly higher numbers of police calls.
Due to caps and restrictions, school choice is very limited in Madison. Unless your family has money. More than 4,300 children attend 31 private schools in Madison, primarily outside of the voucher program.
Related: Police calls near local high schools: 1996-2006.
Madison taxpayers recently funded expansion of our least diverse schools.
I am currently the reading interventionist teacher at West High School.
I’ve been there for 4 years. Previous to that I’ve been in the school district as a regular ed teacher for about 20 years. I started in the early 90s.
I have (a) question I want to ask you guys. What district-wide systems are in place as we use our map data to monitor the reading student achievement?
Student by student, not school by school but also school by school and provide support for the school the teachers and the students that need it.
And especially to help students who score in the bottom percentiles who will need an intervention which is significantly different than differentiation.
I was (a) TAG coordinator (talent and gifted coordinator) for 4 years at Hamilton and I have extensive background with the talent and gifted and differentiation training.
( and teaching of teachers). Now I’m in interventionist and they are significantly different we need interventions to serve the lowest scoring kids that we have.
Here’s my data from this year and this is why I’m here:
Of the 65 students plus or minus it kind of changes this year 24 of them are regular ed students.
Another way to say they don’t have an IEP so there is no excuse for that reading intervention in (that group).
12 of those 24 have been enrolled in Madison School since Pre-K kindergarten or kindergarden. 12 students have been in Madison Schools.
They have High attendance. They have been in the same (you know) feeder school they have not had high mobility. There is no excuse for 12 of my students to be reading at the first second or third grade level and that’s where they’re at and I’m angry and I’m not the only one that’s angry.
The teachers are angry because we are being held accountable for things that we didn’t do at the high school level. Of those 24 students, 21 of them have been enrolled in Madison for four or more years.
Of those 24 students one is Caucasian the rest of them identify as some other ethnic group.
I am tired of the district playing what I called whack-a-mole, (in) another words a problem happens at Cherokee boom we bop it down and we we fix it temporarily and then something at Sherman or something at Toki or something at Faulk and we bop it down and its quiet for awhile but it has not been fixed on a system-wide level and that’s what has to change.
Thank you very much.
Madison taxpayers have long spent far more than most K-12 school districts, now between 18 and 20k per student, depending on the district documents one reviews.
Remember that report on Providence schools? Nothing has changed… Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results over the Decades
Examiners observed students during class chatting with friends, talking on the phone and watching YouTube videos. “Kindergartners punch each other in the face—with no consequences,” one teacher said. About a quarter of teachers were absent at least 10% of the school year. Student test scores are the worst in Rhode Island and lower than districts in other states with similar demographics. “Economically disadvantaged students experienced decreasing rates of proficiency as they progressed through school, with a low of only 6.2% proficiency by the 8th grade,” the report noted.
Cue the condemnations by political leaders who presided over this horror show. “This report makes clear that the status quo is failing our kids and we know that nipping at the margins will not be enough,” Mayor Jorge Elorza declared. “We need wholesale, transformational change.”
Madison West High School pauses Personalized Pathways as model expands at 3 Madison high schools
The school is hitting the pause button as it looks to address concerns that the program has not shown an improvement in student outcomes.
Pathways is billed as an interconnected, experiential approach where learning is centered around a career field; students form tight-knit communities with classmates and teachers within the pathway; and material learned in one class is connected to other classes. Eighth-grade students have the option to apply for Pathways before entering high school.
“We want students to think about how they’re experiencing high school and how those experiences have connections across classrooms and are tied to a theme that is brought to life across their four years,” said Cindy Green, the district’s executive director of secondary programs and Pathways.
Related: Small Learning Communities and English 10.
Madison must address its crisis of illiteracy
I am grieving the death of Toni Morrison.
I admired Morrison deeply because she had the courage to speak truth with unflinching clarity, and because she did so with a magnificent lyricism.
In the wake of Morrison’s passing, I have been feeling doubly sad because I know the vast majority of our black students in Madison will never read anything Morrison wrote. Why? Because they cannot read at the level required to enter the hallowed space of her work.
But the situation has improved for our black students, you say.
No, it hasn’t, I reply.
And because everyone claims to be data driven these days, let me offer up the cold, hard numbers.
According to the state Department of Public Instruction, only 10% to 15% of our black fourth-graders in Madison are reading proficiently. (Note: Fourth grade is a pivotal year, when “learning to read” becomes “reading to learn.”) That means 85% to 90% of them are not. The situation has not changed for a very long time.
Unbelievably, things do not improve as our black fourth-graders move from grade to grade. As a cohort of Madison students moves from elementary through high school, it continues to be the case that no more than 15% of the black students in the cohort are reading proficiently. That means no fewer than 85% of them still are not.
The illiteracy of Madison’s black students is a longstanding crisis. It is time to make it our highest priority.
Literacy is a fundamental responsibility of public education. It is the key that opens the door to the wider world of opportunity, possibility and change. Literacy is a prerequisite for active and informed participation in our increasingly fragile democracy. It is the single most personally and politically empowering tool on the planet.
Let me be clear: The problem is not that our black children cannot learn how to read. The problem is our failure to teach them how to read, exacerbated by our complacency around that failure.
I cannot imagine what it must be like to go to school every day not knowing how to read. I question the value of a high school diploma in the absence of basic academic skills, such as literacy. I do not understand how our black children can be expected to feel “excellent” when they cannot read. I am baffled and outraged by the absence of honest public conversation about the unconscionably low literacy rate of our black students.
There is a long, inglorious history of the powerful withholding literacy from the powerless, which is why some people argue that our ongoing failure to teach our black students how to read is the new Jim Crow.
Agree or disagree about how to explain it. Can we at least agree that whatever we’ve been doing for so many years hasn’t worked, and that it’s long past time for us to figure out what will?
In blessed memory of Toni Morrison, let us join our hands and hearts together and finally teach our black children how to read.
Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.
Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.
The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.
On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.
According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.
Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.
2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”
2013: What will be different, this time?
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.
Open Records vs the taxpayer funded Madison school board
Nicki Vander Meulen, who was elected to the board in 2017 and serves as the board’s clerk, said that in response to the union’s push, district administrators in a private “board briefing” Monday with her and another board member said acceding to the union’s demand would set a “bad precedent.”
“That’s virtually telling you how to vote,” she said.
Vander Meulen is not the first board member to question the legality of board briefings, which were instituted in 2013 by just-departed former superintendent Jennifer Cheatham and are held separately between one or two board members and administrators to go over items on upcoming agendas.
Former board member TJ Mertz stopped attending the meetings out of fear they could amount to the creation of “walking quorums,” which occur when members of a public body coordinate privately to take a certain action, thus rendering “the publicly held meeting a mere formality,” according to the state Department of Justice.
Madison has for decades spent far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts. Yet, we’ve long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Commentary on Madison (and WiscoNsin’s) long term, disastrous reading Results
Research has shown “that phonics instruction is helpful for all students, harmful for none, and crucial for some,” the paper says. It says there are other essentials to good reading instruction. But research on the value of phonics is consistent and goes back decades, it says.
“Teaching students the basic letter-sound combinations gives them access to sounding out approximately 84% of the words in English print,” the paper says.
Phonics advocates in Wisconsin and elsewhere think this is a big deal. Steve Dykstra, a leader of the pro-phonics Wisconsin Reading Coalition, called the paper “revolutionary.” He said, “I would not go so far as to say this is the end of the reading wars. Maybe it’s the beginning of the end of the reading wars.”
Others are reacting more cautiously. Deborah Cromer, president of the Wisconsin State Reading Association, the main group of Wisconsin reading teachers, said in a statement that the organization supports the use of phonics. But she described other needs, including better staffing of classrooms and better training of teachers.
Why is this urgent in Wisconsin? Because we’re not doing so well. National Assessment of Educational Progress results released in 2017 showed that Wisconsin fourth graders scored overall below the national average, that Wisconsin’s decline in the percentage of proficient students from 2015 to 2017 was one of the largest in the country, and that Wisconsin kids of all races and ethnic groups were proficient at rates below the national average of each group — including that Wisconsin white kids were below white kids nationally.
A couple of decades ago, Wisconsin fourth grade reading ranked among the best in the United States. The state now ranks in the mid-30s
Furthermore, initiatives in Wisconsin in recent years do not seem to be bearing much fruit. They include stronger requirements for getting a license to teach reading to elementary kids and a state requirement (not enforced) that school districts screen kindergartners to spot and respond to reading problems early.
Departing Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham WORT FM Interview
mp3 audio – Machine Transcript follows [Better transcript, via a kind reader PDF]:
I’m Carousel Baird and we have a fabulous and exciting show lined up today. Such a fabulous guy sitting right across from me right here in the studio. Is Madison metropolitan school district current superintendent? She still here in charge of all the fabulous thing it is. Dr. Jennifer Cheatham.
Hello, Jen. Hey Carousel. Hey everybody. It’s good to be here. Wonderful to have you and I do want to just take it off. You know, you’re leaving at the end of the summer moving on to other Adventures but to say first of all, thank you to your accessibility. We’ve had a lot of conversations. We have you and many of your leaders. They aren’t always easy going conversation there. I believe yeah. But they’re important conversations and your availability to answer questions and be on the show and come and have these conversations is really important to Madison. So thank you. Well, thank you for asking.
It’s been wonderful every time and I’m sure it’ll be wonderful again another great show. That’s right. We’re gonna make it happen. I don’t know I’ll burn down all the bridges really until nothing to lose. All right. Well, let’s sort of start with a I have very few statistics that I brought. Just a few. Okay. It’s a few there’s approximately 27,000 students career and MSD more than 50% or students of color including 18 percent that have self-identified as African-American 21 percent that have identified as lad necks. 32 elementary schools 12 middle schools six high schools. There you go. Those are the stat.
It’s big for Dane County, but it’s not it’s not huge and compared to other big cities. Does that make it more manageable? I can work with those six years ago when you showed up and not that I want to be the superintendent of Madison. Yeah, it felt like a world that you could play a role in no doubt. No doubt. I think you know this Carousel, but I worked in San Diego before coming to Madison where there are 200 schools. Then Chicago we’re at that time there were about 600 schools. And so coming to Madison. It did seem doable to the challenges seemed hard even from the outside, but they seem doable but I always imagined. Wow, I could have all 50 principles in a room together. Right right, and we can just talk real talk and that’s been true. I mean, it’s been wonderful. That way yeah big challenges but doable because of the size and the community that we had 11, so.
First of all, congratulations on your new position you’re moving off to Harvard University that I mean, I think that bodes well for us for that leader is from Madison move on to Harvard University big. So thanks for representing Madison and at Harvard. That’s that’s excellent. No doubt.
I think sometimes when we’re. In our own communities, we lose perspective on them and as much as we have challenges, we have tremendous strength and school districts outside. Of Madison nationally have looked to us right have come to us for guidance and advice for Lessons Learned some of them learn the hard way, right but important lessons that we’ve gleaned.
So I want people to know that not only have we made progress here within our community, but we’ve been already Madison’s been influencing the field of Education Beyond Madison. Is that right when we’re in it? Are we see are the challenges right? Because like okay, here’s another problem. Let’s work on that. Here’s another and you know, that’s the daily job of solving problems, but understand that it is it because we’re at least a community that is willing. To address the challenges instead of trying to ignore them. I think so. I think that’s a part of it. I had a in still have a long time Mentor named Karl Cohen. He was the superintendent in Long Beach many years ago, and I remember my early days working with Carl he called. This work. He describes it as a hard slog right the hard slog of school Improvement, right? It’s not you don’t get to spike the football much right? There’s always another challenge to address right and it’s ultimately about children, right? So it’s like schools and school districts are at the center have Humanity right in all the challenges that come with. With being alive right exist in a school in a classroom in a school district.
So yeah, it’s challenging work. But I to your point, I think that Madison has as a community right of Educators, but of people have been able I think to talk about hard issues together. I’d love to talk to you about that more actually. Okay, I think it’s a it’s a it’s a major asset that we don’t talk about enough our ability to be in dialogue with one another even if we disagree even if we don’t go the route that you know change makers want to go the fact that we’re willing to have those conversations that I do every show on the table. I do I think that that’s a really valid. Let’s talk about.
So you’ve been here for six plus years was talking about the changes that you’ve seen in that six plus years. I think there have been a lot of changes. Okay, and I I mean, of course everyone’s going to think that. But they’re for the better, but I would say it was for the better. I think most of they have been for the better when I started six plus years ago the general sentiment. It was a difficult time in Madison. By the way, the contacts Act 10 had just happened. So the education Community was feeling incredibly demoralizing of astride devastated. I mean, you don’t get over if those feelings actually, I think they’re hard to get over. Yes. What else was happening at that time the right as I was starting the race to equity report was released. So everyone was kind of grappling what the reality is of the disparities between black and white people in our community putting numbers to the communities of color new these challenges all along and no longer could the white communities of Madison deny them when the numbers were boldly in their face, right?
So think about that though. So here we have teachers staff. Educators feeling demoralized because of actin and simultaneously being faced with the reality of these disparities, right? That’s really challenging. What else was happening at that time? Oh and the Urban League proposal for the charter school, right had just been denied why that was a tough. That was a tough moment in Madison, right? It was a tough moment was a very. Conversation tell me about it. It was intense. And so that was the context that I came into welcome. Yeah, right and I’m a parent Lee a very optimistic person. So I thought yeah we can do this. This is hard but. There’s an inflection point here, right? We can come together and find a better way of doing this and I felt like the all the ingredients existed in Madison to do so, so it’s interesting.
I given all that context what came up in those first.
Few months when I was on the job was a desire for just Direction and coherence right? There. Was this feeling that the district at that point in time, which is a point of I think some chaos, right? There’s another chaotic period of. Not knowing what direction to go in knowing that we were facing challenges but not knowing how to move forward everyone just needed and wanted desperately some direction, right and some coherence around the strategies that were being put into play. So I took that and ran with it and I think over these last five or six years we’ve accomplished that meaning we have real Direction. I still get regularly criticized for doing too much. Lunch, right that’s different from not having Direction. It’s hard to do when there’s so many things to do to have I’m sure I desire to fix not everything at once and yet you have to move all the balls forward a little bit at a time. I think that’s true. So my challenge has always been well. Okay, we are going to have to do a lot because there’s urgency right and there are children who need us to make progress now. So I can’t narrow the focus too much. But at least I can make sure that what we’re doing is coherent right that it all holds together and is leading us in a Direction that’s addressing the real problems that we face not the fake problems.
But the real ones and again, I think we’ve accomplished that I really wanted for us to adopt some more discipline ways of working. I wanted us out of the gate to invest in school leadership. Team School Improvement planning data use I just wanted us to be a more discipline organization sense of structure. God have structured of systems and structures and shared leadership structures. That would help the people who work most closely with children. To be empowered to make the best possible decisions. I remember I remember that. Yeah, I remember when you moved here. Yeah. I have a 7th grader so high had just gotten to know. Ms. And Madison Public Schools, right? I was an observer on some level before before you became our superintendent and I and I remember having a conversation with Marj Passman is a mentor and good friend of mine who was a mentor member of the Madison School Board.
Yeah, but I’m talking about how my daughter’s first grade class wasn’t learning the same thing. Add another first grade class across town in still in Madison because that wasn’t the structure that we had and that on some level. There was a lot of teacher freedom, but on another level kids you you couldn’t switch schools and expect to be able to have the same curriculum and you would either be Advanced or behind depending on where you go. Just because you move departments across the city.
Well, that’s an excellent point. It’s not like that anymore. No, and so in addition to creating more discipline in the ways we make decisions and how we measure success and learn from. Our failures and make improvement over time. We insisted on more instructional coherence. So let’s get clear on what we think great teaching looks like in the classroom. Let’s get clear on.
The standards right that we have to teach especially in literacy and Mathematics that has been the major Focus for these past five six years and and we insisted on on teachers not working in isolation, but working in teams, right? So there was a big investment and not just. As a learning community understand how we teach. But knowing a little bit more about what we all need to teach and how we how we need to work together as teams to continually reflect on the effectiveness of our practice. So teachers coming together on a regular basis to talk about what we taught last week. What do we learn from it? Which kids are getting it who isn’t what does that mean for what we’re going to do next week, right? And that sounds simple but it is just essential. I mean that is the core of what. All districts do and I could see if I feel like every time you start a new initiative or change things up. Not you specifically but everyone in general. Yeah, you almost have to go all in okay. This is what we’re doing. And then once you master it, you can pull back out so I could see a lot of challenges and difficulties of teachers that were fabulous teachers. Oh, yeah that. More of course. They taught our kids, of course, they were fabulous qualified teachers, but they weren’t as interested in making sure that their first grader was doing the same as another first grader was doing they had love and nurturing and. They wanted to inspire this these students to love education and not that they have to be I can’t think of the right word come combative with each other but there were definitely teachers that thrived because of the free form that we allowed and here you are now adding adding a structure to it.
Where do you think we are in the process? Do you think there’s a point where we can say? Okay, you’ve mastered the structured and now we can pull back out.
Yeah. Oh my God, that’s such a good question. I think that both the discipline ways of working that I described first. And this work that we’ve done around instructional coherence was. For a while and for some felt really constraining write your point and it would for great principals who felt like they had a leadership structure that was working or you know, like they were principals who were feeling those constraints to and certainly teachers and I’ve talked with enough teachers to know for a fact that that is absolutely true, but I think. Foot I buy what I’ve always believed was that it was a step in the process, right? Which is I think is your point but that’s not the end goal. The end goal is something more important the end goal for those discipline ways of working at the school and District level, especially at the school level related to sit planning. We’re so that at this stage we could even further Empower schools right to make their own decisions because now sit planning, I don’t know.
I’m so. Sorry something and I will Improvement planning which is kind of disciplined way of working. We’ve adopted at the school level for decision making okay and school-level focus areas. We want now that those disciplined ways of working are pretty embedded. Like they’re part of our culture and our way of working. We can actually further Empower schools to do what they think is right for their school Community right and in collaboration with. Our students their staff their their families. We the new strategic framework kind of lays out a strategy for further empowerment of schools. Same thing for the classroom experience. Now that we have more coherence right instructionally as a system. I do think that now we’re at the stage where what we can and should be thinking about is how to ensure that those the teachers have the freedom they need. To ensure that those are not just nurturing environments that build community which is essential but that there’s deep and Rich learning happening in the classroom. Right? It’s not standards alignment isn’t enough. It’s got to be instruction that’s meaningful to the children who are in the classroom, right? It’s got to be content where students can see. Themselves represented in the curriculum I so that they can understand the world around them and interrogate it. Like I just think that we’re at poised to bring instruction to another level and Madison without losing the coherence that we’ve created right we can Empower schools to make decisions for their communities without losing those discipline ways of working that we think are essential this essay about Madison when you inherited it that it really. Didn’t have this structure.
It really was a city that you know again, I’ve only been here for I’ve been here for how long have I been here at around 20 years now. I don’t know some so I certainly don’t know the history of this of the city, but I know the gentleman before you were white men that perhaps didn’t mind that. School a was completely different than school be they didn’t think about the academics because that wasn’t they weren’t I don’t I don’t want to slam these gentlemen at all, but for some reason that wasn’t Madison’s priority, I was sort of surprising. There’s a whole lot to unpack there as their Carousel. But so I don’t know. I know all I know is what I’ve experienced and. Not just me, but the people who have led in Madison the teacher leaders who are on their school based leadership teams, the principles the senior team of Madison. We are hardcore Educators right who have put the educational experience at the center right that the theory that we have adopted for change has been. Guest on improving the experience that students have. With their teachers around content that’s worth learning, right that is that is the hard slog of school Improvement, right?
Yeah, we’re talking with dr. Jennifer Cheatham superintendent of Madison Public Schools. We’d love your questions or comments, please join the conversation the phone call. The phone number is area code 6082562001. You can also send us a tweet at wort talk or a message on our Facebook page. Our page is a public Affair 89.9 FM Madison.
So Jen. Let’s talk about race. Okay, and it seems the intersect with everything that we do big picture is I sir our president is racist. I think our I think our country is racist. It is Madison racist. Yeah. Yeah, I think every individual. I think I’m reason I live in Wisconsin. I live in Wisconsin. I live in the United States.
I’m racist I am to I’m married to a black man and I’m a bi-racial son and I’m racist it is I’ve gotten myself into so much trouble for saying those words Carousel. Really? Yeah, I think you know, it’s funny. I’ve I love saying those words, but that’s a conversation. We were talking about at the beginning. Can we at least. Are there less admit it right? I think I out of all of the challenges that I’ve experienced in Madison being able to lead. For racial Equity to try to be an increasingly anti-racist leader, which means doing my own work, right? It means doing my own inside-out work simultaneously alongside everyone else who’s an educator Madison has that has been the most challenging aspect of this work and the most fulfilling in some ways right the most important the most powerful and the most. Anjing. Yeah. That’s sort of break break it down in so many pieces. Does this fit in with the conversation about the behavior education plan. It does because of The Bravery you say suspend and expel students of color at a tremendously High rate. I didn’t I didn’t pull up the numbers from six years ago. I’m happy I didn’t because I don’t we don’t need the numbers in front of us for you and I. To admit the things that we’ve already admitted and then Along Came the behavior education plan. That was really a challenging new way to look at things. Yeah. Yeah, I think let me let me I want to zoom out before we Zoom back into this because I do think it’s a great example of this work in action. I think in my first five years. We certainly were leading for racial equity and the main approach we were taking was to let me think a couple things. We were we were certainly talking a lot about. What it means for all of us to be culturally responsive Educators, right? How do we build relationships with students of color especially in a district where most of us most educators are white and white females like me and at the central office of the district level. We were very interested in both investing resources and tackling the. Institutional barriers that stood in the way of success for students of color and their families, right? So we’ve been all along, you know working on addressing those systems and structures, you know, we rewrote our strategic framework.
A couple years ago now launched it a year ago and the fall and tried. We thought we were ready and I think we were to take it a whole to a whole nother level and be even more explicit in that commitment. Right? We use the word anti-racism right that we are as Educators obligated to be actively anti-racist. You intentionally had a piece that talked about black Excellence. Yeah. We are focusing on our black. It’s to rise them up. And even though I think there has been criticism from the community of black Excellence. Let’s see it. But that’s the whole point. You’re at least you’re putting it out there. If you never put it out there. I can’t hold herself becoming an old accountable. That’s hey and he can’t measure. Your failure is it’s so the community that wants to tell us were failing. At least we’re saying you’re eight.
We said black excellence and we’re not meeting it at all.
No doubt and both of these simple things are different but half have to happen simultaneously, right? You have to lead for black Excellence, which is I mean, what what what is implied? I hope in those words is that. That black students are already excellent, right and that it is our job to yeah to cultivate that excellence and that we have an obligation simultaneously while we’re cultivating black Excellence to recognize and dismantle. Racism in all of its forms and we’re Educators who were held to a higher standard. This is a really big deal. I think for me the that work that we launched last year. What I wish I would have done better was to kind of preview for everybody what it might feel like. Right that we would feel excited and motivated by the commitment. And then when we started actually doing more of the work and holding ourselves accountable for it every time not just sometimes. That it would create a feeling of like not knowing of disequilibrium. I’m not sure being sure about your next step what I think it’s produced a lot in Madison right now is this feeling of. Of who’s the guy on the good side and who’s on the bad side? Right like yeah, which is really lines are very drawn the very drawn it’s fine because it is a step in the process. We just can’t stay there. Right? Like what we need to do as a community is a okay. Hi, this is this is natural feeling right when you’re faced with our own right racism the racism of the institution that we work for right? Like I have this ambivalent relationship with any school district.
I love it because I’m rooting for it and I hate it because it was. Kind of born out of out of racist ideal too many it right and that’s the rest the whole concept of institutional process what it is, you’re fulfilling your actual intentional institutional design, right which leads to racism. So it is natural to go through this feeling of disequilibrium to worry that you’re not on the good side, right and. And if we stay there things we may actually we will suffer as a result. We have to pull together and how that dialogue that we were talking about earlier in the show. Like we have to not let people leave the table but bring them back in and loving and compassionate ways. I actually think that Madison and the school district. Which is a kind of at the center of Madison will be stronger as a result of this dialogue, right? We’re going to get through it and we are going to be better the hope of the future. Yeah. I have no question about it because there is a movement underway in Madison not just in the school district. I mean our educators are phenomenal people who get it in our working heart to do this Inside Out work. And make our institution a better Institution for every child. I have no doubt but we have to stop pitting ourselves against one another right we have to stop looking for someone to blame and just accept that this is our reality right? It’s not just ours is that affects it? Yeah, and and where the people who are in these seats now right where the. Were the people do or learn leaders leaders do it?
Yeah, we have a question that came in Jen had a question on Facebook. Thank you Jenn for contributing to the conversation and using Facebook. Excellent. It does get related over to me. Ye success technology. She wanted to ask you dr. Cheatham to talk about what carrot parents can do. I almost had carrots. I guess I don’t know why maybe I’m hungry. Okay start over Jen wants to know what parents can do to. Push the school’s forward and to work on race and Equity issues. Oh, excellent. And I also I’m going to put my own little spin on me before of I think they’re different conversations versus white parents parents of color. I know that there’s so much intentional effort and we can talk about the successes there of getting families and communities involved. But we also live in a time where when people say where are the parents which I hear all the time. My answer is I don’t know working three jobs trying to knock it evicted. Taking the bus that doesn’t actually get them to where they’re going. They are just hoping that their kid is safe at school. They don’t have time to meet with the teacher because they don’t have enough time and money. To fight being evicted which is what they’re working on and then those are not I don’t think that’s anecdotal as a tenant rights attorney. I think those are very real lives of many many people. Absolutely. Sorry Jen. I co-opted your question there, but can you help us understand the complexity of wanting parents involved needing parents involved and also acknowledging that parents have. Overwhelming things of basic needs on their plate. Yeah, I parent partnership has been a steady Focus for us as well. I mean it was one of the major priorities in our initial strategic framework.
Shout out to Nichelle Nichols who’s been rocking it in that role. Yeah, one of the greatest thing Madison she is amazing and in our whole Focus there has been on. Parents as partners right as full Partners in the educational process. We have always felt that parents don’t need to be present in the traditional ways, which is what you are kind of getting at a minute ago Carousel to be our partners, but they need great communication. They need to know what’s happening with their child at school so that they can play a part in the ways that they that are possible for them. Meaning sometimes the most important thing a parent can do is just to check in with their kid right to talk about it to encourage them, right? You don’t have to come to the PTO or PTA meeting it on their math tests to say. Hey, how’s school going? Did you do feel safe and I’ll be there? How you challenged? I love you. I know you’re smart. Right? It’s right. Yeah, no question. Every parent of course does every that’s what every loving parent loving parent does absolutely they have a free five minutes at the end of the day, sometimes they don’t all kinds of ways to be partners with teachers and all the I’ve talked to a lot of parents over the years and I’ll tell you that relationship between the parent and the teacher is the one that’s most important to most parents, right? That’s a relationship. They want to have be really strong. I think to the Facebook question. Yes, what I’m reading into that is how beyond the typical parent partnership can parents be involved especially around this work on race and equity and I am and I would encourage. Especially the white parents and Madison to think very carefully about and deeply about this question. How do. White parents, especially parents of privilege unintentionally kind of hold up the systems and structures that need to be disassembled of every child is going to be successful the the wrong idea as a white parent and I live I’m a white parent in a predominantly white neighborhood in a predominantly white school that. We don’t have to talk about racism right don’t talk about it. We’re not racist. So we don’t talk about race, which is actually the wrong response when we live in a racist world, right? Yeah, I mean students need to talk about it, right they need to make sense out of this world around them, especially if they’re going to make it a better place. I think that’s essential but I think I’ve seen some leaders especially PTO and PTA leaders really lead this conversation while over.
Last couple of years I’ve seen PTO and PTA leaders introducing book clubs to read. I like books like Robyn D’Angelo is white fragility right among parents to better understand why they’re having some of the responses that they’re having to our efforts to address racial Equity had on. I mean, I would encourage. Parents be thinking about that. What inside out work do they need to do right? It’s not about what we do in the big ways necessarily the big initiatives. It’s what we do in the small ways our one-on-one conversations with our fellow parents, right how we challenge one another. I think that’s really important. And do you see those changes?
There’s so much to talk about we only had I known manage which is crazy. But do you see these changes? I do happening in Madison by the conversations of of and I think that’s the natural Progressive is to start with anger what we’re not racist. What are you talking about? My kid got a great education. I love Madison schools. Are you attacking Madison School? Yeah, we need to protect our schools, too. Sort of okay. Well, actually here’s a conversation. I just gave a here’s my tangent on this. I just gave a presentation on Criminal Justice Reform to Jewish Social Services and part of a tiny piece of my talk was about police in schools, uh-huh a tiny piece and it was just acknowledging. The school-to-prison pipeline and hey, here’s the percentage of African-American students that get tickets when their police are in our schools and all of a sudden people go. Oh, that’s why you’re mad about police and schools and that people in that room actually said that to me they were ready to say we don’t need police in schools, you know, but at least there was a moment of understanding that hadn’t trickled down to them of why would people only criminals are afraid of the police kind of thing. And I think that’s what you’re getting at. Is that do you see those conversations happening? I do I mean I again, I think there is a powerful.
An exciting movement underway in Madison that more and more people not just our Educators, but madisonians are are getting into this dialogue with one another right in the small moments and in the big ones and I think that bodes well for the future of Madison, we justwe you can’t step out of it. We can’t pity each other or people against one another even the police in schools issue. I mean, it’s such a good example care. Well, I think that bye. Criticizing and raising serious questions about the issue shouldn’t be misread as as being anti-police, but it always ends up sounding that way right and there might be people on that position that are anti-police but that’s not the core of what they’re saying and you and you use the excuse of anti-police to stop listening you what they’re saying. You got it. It’s a really. Easy way to shut down the conversation and what I want us all is to stay in it together, right? Let’s not shut down the conversation. Let’s figure out what is the real problem that we are trying to solve and if we can do that we’re going to be okay and you feel like we’re moving so back to Madison schools were what talk to us about some of the programs and the initiatives that you feel are moving us.
Especially there was a collar and then he got disconnected sorry about that Dan. He had a question about the achievement Gap and I don’t know the details of what his question was but moving forward with how do we raise, you know? Address the racial Equity that exists. Yeah. Well, I think that’s what this new strategic framework is all about. I’m very hopeful board I think is very supportive of continuing to move in this direction and I would hope would find a future leader who’s capable of leading this work. But but yeah, I think we’re poised for really really powerful things what needs to happen to end racial disparities in Madison schools. Oh gosh, I mean this not any one thing right? I mean I think the center of it if I had to pick one thing Carousel it would be to for everything that we do to be ultimately aimed at. Seeing each other’s Humanity it does that sound too fluffy. That’s what we need to do. Right everything. We do the way we. Organized schools right through the school Improvement planning process and our decisions about instructional design if we made all those decisions to make sure that you experience a school day and I deeply humane way right where your sauce seen as a human being that’s seeing the teacher as a full, you know, human beings seeing every student in their full Humanity every parent. I mean, it’s interesting right like what if that were the design principle for every. Fission we made moving forward. What does that look like? They’re I know that there’s conversations about schools have become too academic Focus sometimes.
Yeah, and I don’t know how you deal with this you get it from both directions. We’re not meeting. Our academic needs were not academic focused at all. And we’re to academic Focus can my kid please take a dance class and a Ceramics class and something that makes them feel like a beautiful person. I think that the. Energies, I’m going to make some assumptions about what the caller called about the strategies that have been put into play over the last 20 years to quote unquote close the achievement Gap that term drives me absolutely crazy, by the way.
Why because what we’re talking about is racism. We’re not talking about achievement Gap. Yeah. I don’t think it’s actually describing the actual problem that we’re trying to solve. But I think that the strategies that have been put into play which have been largely about. I being more prescriptive on academics how we teach literacy? How do we teach math about intervention? So giving double and triple doses of literacy and math if it’s a student is struggling. I think that those strategies I mean we need to teach literacy and math. Well, I mean don’t get me wrong. That’s what I wanted to see. I don’t want anyone to misinterpret me here, but the the intense focus on only that has actually I think set us backwards and not. Pushed us forward. I think that if we had and this is where the district is going now building on the coherence that we’ve created if districts were more focused on deep and Rich learning experiences for students if imagine young black students saw themselves in their curriculum right from day one if they were getting access to. Historically accurate depiction right of the world in which they live if they were. How do I say this if they were consistently seen as fully human? Riot too many black students in this country are not are dehumanized on a regular basis. I think we would see those results change much much faster.
So the next level of work in Madison is all about that empowering everyone in a school Community to create a holistic instructional experience investing in teachers as culturally responsive teachers who are actively anti-racist ensuring that The Learning Experience offers one that is deep and Rich right and relevant to the students who attend our schools. I mean that work is already underway in Madison and I feel like that is the key to transformation. So all of these things sound wonderful. I know they cost money.
Yeah, let’s talk about money. Let’s talk about that, Wisconsin the United States but Wisconsin award-winning, Wisconsin, we do not fund our Public Schools know and one of the. From my perspective from what I’ve seen as a parent and someone that cares about these issues from the behavioral education plan for example was that there weren’t enough support for teachers and in our schools because we don’t have enough money to hire. A dozen social workers in every school. I mean people always talk about let’s get it our knees. I want to have social workers sitting around doing nothing because we have we’ve hired so many of them. I mean I dream of that of a school just overflowing with abundance of people ready at any moment, but that is a complete fantasy that is not based in any reality of how we fund schools in Wisconsin.
Yeah. I agree entirely. I mean the scarcity model of it. I don’t know. I’ve been an educator for over 20 years and sometimes you’ve been living in scarcity and for me working and scarcity for so long. You forget what? What’s possible Right like you you might accept it as the me accepted as the norm. I know it’s terrible and we shouldn’t accept it as the norm. I I was thrilled when Tony Evers got elected. I will not I’m not shy about saying that. And I cares about public education. He sure does he gets it. I think the proposal that he put forward was really inspired and inspiring and not and not Fantasyland. I mean he was trying to lay out for all of us. A picture of what it actually looks like to fund education public education appropriately. I was happy to see that we got a little bit of bump in per-pupil aid for next year, which is great. It’s still not enough. No, the problem is is that right if my daughter’s don’t get things in their school. My daughters have piano lesson. My daughter has, you know dance classes among our neighbors daughter has.
My math tutor all of these things that if you can’t get it at school people with money can help supplement our are excellent schools that are starved to death. We can I can supplement it but if that cost thousands of dollars a year that which what I do, so ultimately the disparities get bigger that we get it right they get worse. I think that’s exactly right Carousel. I. I mean, I’m not giving up on what governor eavers is trying to accomplish and I don’t think anyone should we should be funding full day for K in the state of Wisconsin? I mean that is an absolute must we should be funding reimbursement for special ed services. That is an absolute must. Yeah, and we we should be fully funding services for English language Learners, which is not happening. Now. I mean the list goes on and on and on I’ll tell you we make we we do a lot with very little but yeah our kids and our teachers and our parents deserve much more. There’s no doubt about that. What do you what do you hope to see in the next superintendent? What is what is your you know, the team comes together. You don’t really give a saying I don’t the TV were part of got something in it.
You know, what do you think are? The school board should be looking at when they choose. Hopefully they have many qualified applicants to choose from but everyone brings their own unique strengths and weaknesses to the table. One of the strengths you think they should be looking for. Well, I mean this superintendent. We’ll be starting from a fairly strong Foundation. Right? I mean, they’re not going on say so yourself. Yeah, I mean, they’re not going to have to redo their HR systems the budget despite the challenges we just described is. This salad we have got is a lot to work from there. So I’m part of what I just I hope is that they’re looking for someone who can lead this kind of next level of work, right? And that’s got to be someone who has a. Fairly robust vision and deep understanding of the kind of transformational change that we’re trying to make now and we’re trying to make changes in instructional design that are.
That are truly transformed of the Community Schools model, right that is a different way of doing school Pathways at the high school level that’s a different way of doing school. There’s pushback and all of them. Yeah. I’m scared of Pathways and it’s gonna be amazing. Good good. I’m scared of what West High School looks like when my kids get their will because it is a different instructor design, right? I mean, it’s weird. This is a longer conversation, but when you’re trying to change. The way schooling looks and feels for students so that they so that they’re actually thriving in school and truly prepared for post-secondary and I would hope that we would get a leader who can lead that transformational effort. I do think the district and the school board should be looking for someone who can continue to keep racial Equity at the center. I think there are many enough education leaders and superintendents who cannot just talk that talk but but walk it so I’m hopeful that they’ll look for for somebody who can continue that work as well.
Yeah, and I think the last thing I would say is there are a lot of leaders out there who. Don’t understand teaching. This is maybe what you were getting to and you talked about my predecessors a little bit but there but I would hope that they’re looking for someone who has really strong instructional leadership skills. Right who really has a mission to feels like to be in the last past. I think it’s really important. I had always wished that I could have taken a week every year and gotten back into a classroom and co-taught with a teacher. I was never able to quite pull it off. I hope that the next superintendent right to say really grounded for my work that teachers do what is happening. That’s right. That’s right.
And do you think. I know the school board has talked about for referendum, ‘s do you think those are things that we should be moving forward both. I know there’s conversation about building referendums and operational referendum. They’ve been supported in Madison. I’m hopeful I would hope that our school district if they think that’s the right thing to do would go for it. I would hope so. I mean, I we’ve been working on that long range facilities plan for years and we didn’t even talk about some of the other things that we’ve done is we’ve made some facilities improvements already. But but the plan that is shaping up on facilities, which would lead with the for comprehensive high schools the Alternative High School Capital High and address. South Madison some major gaps in learning at the elementary level. I think the package up will Shape Up is going to be powerful. Yeah, and I both the school board and the new superintendent I think needs to leave that work forward, you know, the buildings that we have our old 50 years on average. We need to take good care of them and our students deserve to learn in you know, in spaces that reflect our r value of them that are inspiring. Yeah, that’s about deep learning to. Wonderful to have you want to wish you great success as you move on to your next Adventures, but you’re you’re still here for a couple more weeks.
Oh, yeah Bennett you have I’m thrilled them transition to transition to Jane Bell more as the interim as you know, and will she serve. The goal of the setup is she’ll serve for the duration of the next school year. Yeah. Yeah, uh-huh. That’s right. And she starts August first. She was the interim when I started. So transition with her in those first months with this job she sure is and it’s been a pleasure to transition with her. I think the district will be good and very good hands with Jay next year. Thanks Carousel. Well, that’s that’s good. Maybe well, I’ll put a bug in Jane’s ear and get her on the show to talk about. I’ve been the challenges of being a leader that isn’t a permanent leader. That’s a whole new world of it, but. When do you you head off to Boston? You still have a bit a couple more weeks other anything left that you’re really focusing on that you that you hope to work on in the next few weeks. Well the next couple of weeks. I’m getting the senior team with Jane set for next year. We want to make sure that the group is ready to rock and roll. The big kickoff of the Year happens in the second week of August meaning there are big Leadership Institute, which is really the signal but the school year is starting welcoming back teachers and starting with the administrators and the leadership teams which includes teachers and then a couple weeks later all the teachers. So we’re working on making sure that that welcome back plan is strong that the team is ready to rock and roll. And they will be it said there’s a strong team here in Madison.
I’m leaving but the team that is here both the principles of leadership teams at the school level and at the district level is a very I don’t know. I mean, they’re an impressive group to say the least. So Madison’s in good hands wonderful. Well again, thank you so much. Dr. Jennifer Cheatham Jen Cheatham Madison superintendent for. Six plus years. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for facing the challenges and. And the criticism and the successes and all of that and we wish you great success in Boston things Carousel. Thanks everyone for listening today exciting news. I’m actually filling in for Ali show tomorrow. So you’re going to hear me go get you to my fabulous voice. It’s coming back tomorrow, but thank you to Tim for engineering Michelle for producing. I think Anita and Joe have been working on the phones. Thanks everyone for your great work. Have a great day. Bye.
2013: What will be different, this time? The Jennifer Cheatham Madison experience – 2019.
Madison has long spent far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts ($18.5 to 20K/student, depending on the District documents). Yet, we have long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Governance: Priorities and OUtcomes in Madison
Zirbel-Donisch said the plan is to have the condoms paid for by outside-partner organizations.
While most four-year University of Wisconsin System colleges offer free condoms, doing so in Wisconsin high schools remains relatively rare.
The state Department of Public Instruction estimated in 2016 that 6.9% of high schools in the state provided free condoms, based on a weighted survey of high school principals.
The decision for the pilot comes after an increase in sexually transmitted infections among youths nationwide, statewide and at West High School.
Rates of sexually transmitted infections in Wisconsin for people between ages 15 and 19 peaked in 2011 and then tapered off before rising each year between 2014 and 2017, according to data from the state Department of Health Services. Nationwide, rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis infections among that age group also climbed during the same time frame.
According to information Public Health Madison & Dane County provided the school district, the number of instances of sexually transmitted infections at West High School increased from about 40 in 2015 to more than 90 in 2017.
The district said 60% of West High respondents to the 2018 Dane County Youth Assessment survey — which tracks middle school and high school student behaviors and risks every few years — reported having voluntary sexual intercourse at least once compared with 35% of students from all Dane County high schools.
Out of 305 sexually active West High students who responded to the survey, 21% reported never using a condom as a way to prevent a sexually transmitted infection and 28% said they sometimes use one.
Countywide, 15% of high school students who are sexually active said they never use a condom to prevent a sexually transmitted infection and 29% sometimes use one.
March, 2019 Madison West’s ESSA Accountability Report.
Transcript (via a machine learning app – apologies for errors):
I am currently the reading interventionist teacher at (Madison) West High School.
I’ve been there for 4 years. Previous to that I’ve been in the school district as a regular ed teacher for about 20 years. I started in the early 90s.
I have (a) question I want to ask you guys. What district-wide systems are in place as we use our map data to monitor the reading student achievement?
Student by student, not school by school but also school by school and provide support for the school the teachers and the students that need it.
And especially to help students who score in the bottom percentiles who will need an intervention which is significantly different than differentiation.
I was (a) TAG coordinator (talent and gifted coordinator) for 4 years at Hamilton and I have extensive background with the talent and gifted and differentiation training.
( and teaching of teachers). Now I’m in interventionist and they are significantly different we need interventions to serve the lowest scoring kids that we have.
Here’s my data from this year and this is why I’m here:
Of the 65 students plus or minus it kind of changes this year 24 of them are regular ed students.
Another way to say they don’t have an IEP so there is no excuse for that reading intervention in (that group).
12 of those 24 have been enrolled in Madison School since Pre-K kindergarten or kindergarden. 12 students have been in Madison Schools.
They have High attendance. They have been in the same (you know) feeder school they have not had high mobility. There is no excuse for 12 of my students to be reading at the first second or third grade level and that’s where they’re at and I’m angry and I’m not the only one that’s angry.
The teachers are angry because we are being held accountable for things that we didn’t do at the high school level. Of those 24 students, 21 of them have been enrolled in Madison for four or more years.
Of those 24 students one is Caucasian the rest of them identify as some other ethnic group.
I am tired of the district playing what I called whack-a-mole, (in) another words a problem happens at Cherokee boom we bop it down and we we fix it temporarily and then something at Sherman or something at Toki or something at Faulk and we bop it down and its quiet for awhile but it has not been fixed on a system-wide level and that’s what has to change.
Thank you very much.
– Via a kind reader.
Despite spending much more than most, now nearly $20,000 per student, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Commentary on The taxpayer supported Madison School Board’s GoVernance Plans: Replacement member and SuperintendenT search
“Given that Mary will not be attending any future meetings, I do feel a sense of urgency in getting this filled,” Reyes said. “I don’t want to move forward through some of the important discussions and decisions we’ll have to make … so i think it is going to be imperative that we move through the process pretty rapidly. We can still do a really transparent process and move quickly through it.”
Under board policy, a vacant seat must be filled by appointment within 60 days of a resignation.
Public notice will be posted in the Wisconsin State Journal from July 12 to July 19. Applicants’ submissions will be publicly available on July 19 before the board votes to appoint a new member on July 22.
“I feel like this timeline is really tight,” board member Cris Carusi said, noting the quick turnaround between applications being due and a vote on the candidate three days later. “This feels way too compressed to make a good decision and I would argue for stretching it out even another week.”
Though there was no vote on the timeline, Reyes said that if the board feels it needs more time to review applications it could explore that option later in the month.
Anyone 18 years or older who resides in the Madison School District can apply to be considered by submitting a letter of interest to the district detailing what qualities they can bring to the School Board, a statement on three issues the district faces and how the prospective board member would address them.
Several elections are on the horizon for the seat over the next two years. Though Burke’s term would have lasted until 2021, whoever is appointed would have to decide by late December if they will run in the April 2020 election to finish out the last year of Burke’s term. Terms on the Madison School Board are three years, but whoever is appointed to Seat 2 must run to complete the one-year term before being able to run for a full three years.
Board member Kate Toews said it “would be very beneficial” having an applicant with experience in referendums or hiring a superintendent.
The last time the School Board appointed someone to fill a vacancy was in 1997 when Nancy Mistele resigned because she was moving out of the School District. Sixteen people applied to replace her.
David Blaska, a former Dane County Board member who lost his School Board race this year to Ali Muldrow, said Monday that he will apply to fill the empty seat after saying Friday he would not.
The conservative blogger said he has “no hope of being named.”
“Still, one must fight the good fight,” he said.
Of the other two candidates who ran in the April election and lost, TJ Mertz said he is not interested in applying and Kaleem Caire said Friday he had not had enough time to make a decision. An attempt to reach Caire Monday night was not successful.
Related:
2013 – 2019: What will be different, this time?
Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results
Lead by example: If you teach children to disrespect teachers, they will do so
aybe kids are disrespecting their teachers because adults have taught them to. If, as Muldrow asserted during her campaign, the “theme” in Madison education is “how do we blame black children, how do we hurt black children, how do we get rid of black children, how do we not listen to black children,” then it makes perfect sense for black children to behave disrespectfully. You don’t sit and politely listen to someone who wants to hurt you because of your race.
Thing is, sitting and listening is an important part of learning. And far from being the enemy, MMSD teachers are essential to the long-term success of Madison’s children of color. While we can’t see into the minds of individual teachers, equity efforts occupy a prominent place in the district’s latest Strategic Framework, and are amply supported by plans, programs and money. And, unlike their students, MMSD teachers are subject to zero-tolerance disciplinary policies, especially when it comes to anything touching on race.
Verbalizing a racial slur, for instance, will get a teacher yanked from the classroom immediately, regardless of the context. To believe that MMSD tolerates racism in its classrooms, let alone promotes it, requires a narrow set of blinders.Those who do believe that racism runs riot in MMSD have every right to share that viewpoint with the school board. If you have attended or seen video of a school board meeting lately, you know that that viewpoint is often expressed during public comment. It’s also expressed at inappropriate times, in the form of over-the-top, chaotic theatrics that intimidate those who disagree into silence. Lately, kids have been helping to throw meetings into chaos, having learned that intimidation is a legitimate means to an end.
All this serves to keep MMSD teachers and staff walking on eggshells. And if you think that a timid faculty is good for black students, think again. At a March 2018 board meeting, MMSD Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham discussed a 2012 study on the “failure to warn.” The study’s authors found that white teachers are sometimes reluctant to constructively criticize black students when academic or behavioral problems first emerge, for fear of being labeled racist. This cheats black students out of the opportunity to correct problems before they rise to punishable levels.Of course grown-ups should encourage kids, through their words and deeds, to stand against injustice. But the style that many Madison equity activists have adopted is causing more injustice than it’s preventing. If we allow our teachers to be disempowered, and their classrooms thrown into chaos, then we have broken our promise to offer every child a sound basic education.
Madison School District taps Jane Belmore (again) to serve as interim superintendent
A familiar face will serve at the helm of the Madison Metropolitan School District for the upcoming school year. The Madison School Board on Friday named Jane Belmore, a retired MMSD teacher and administrator, to serve as the interim superintendent.
Belmore will take over once current Superintendent Jen Cheatham steps down at the end of August. Belmore will serve in the interim role until the board appoints a permanent superintendent, which she said will likely be in June 2020.
“I’m excited to be back,” Belmore said in an interview Friday. “As I’ve watched from afar, I think there’s a really strong leadership team here. They’ve got a great new strategic plan and framework that they’re working from. And I really just wanted to come in and be able to support the teachers and principals as they move forward and support the board as they start the process of searching for a new superintendent.”
Notes and links on Madison Superintendent searches
Jane Belmore notes and links
Commentary on Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 TaX and spending plans
The Madison teachers union, Madison Teachers Inc., is demanding the full cost-of-living increase. According to the union, more than 1,000 district employees, or about one-quarter of all staff, are slated to only receive a base wage increase in 2019-20. Bargaining between the two sides is ongoing.
“We will continue to demand a 2.44% cost-of-living base-wage increase for all employees, regardless of the state budget decisions,” MTI said in its weekly newsletter Monday.
Carusi’s plan would cut $1.6 million from administration and “strategic equity investments,” including reducing conference travel expenses by $250,000 and leaving seven of nine vacant positions in administration unfilled for $600,000 in reductions.
Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts – $18k to 20k per student, depending on the documents one reviews.
Commentary on madison high school “resource officers”
Under a newly proposed contract between the city and the Madison Metropolitan School District, MMSD has the ability to move away from having an officer in each of the city’s four high schools starting in the 2020-21 school year.
Under the new language in the contract, MMSD would have until Sept. 15 to tell the city if it would like to reduce the number of SROs assigned to Madison schools from four to three. The district would have to select which school should have a reduction. The reduction would then take place the following school year.
The new contract language follows a negotiation strategy the Madison School Board broadly supported last month to move towards removing an SRO from at least one of Madison’s high schools.
The new contract will be discussed at the board’s June 10 meeting and likely be up for a vote later in the month. The contract would run until June 2022.
“The Board is considering a proposal from the City that is based upon prior negotiations,” School Board President Gloria Reyes said in an email Friday afternoon. “It would not be appropriate to comment at this time before the Board has fully considered the proposal.”
In December, the Madison School Board approved an amended contract to keep police officers in the high schools after the current contract expires June 30. The added language would have given school officials the ability to remove an officer from a school if they found cause. Madison Police Chief Mike Koval and the city had argued that the added language was illegal, because personnel decisions on officers are under the authority of the police chief.
The proposal follows months of negotiations between the Madison School District and Madison Police Department after a previously proposed contract, which passed the board in December, included an amendment police called a nonstarter.
“I am relieved and grateful that the pleas of parents, students, teachers and staff have been acknowledged, and we can continue to demonstrate that the SROs are a valuable, complementary piece in making our schools safer,” Police Chief Mike Koval said in a statement.
But Koval expressed opposition to the option to drop one officer.
He used a metaphor about a road trip with four children in the car but seat belts for only three, resulting in one child riding without a seat belt and risking injury.
“I love all my kids equally, and I don’t want to have to make a choice as to which kid should be less protected against potential harm(s),” Koval said.
He also questioned how police response time to an incident at a high school without an SRO would be affected, and called choosing what high school would not have an officer “problematic.”
“I have never been silent when I object to things that could impact public safety, and I am against the clause that would provide the district the option of reducing our presence in all of the four high schools,” Koval said.
He acknowledged, though, that the decision to continue the contract is up to elected school and city representatives.
Madison East high school? Madison West? La Follette? James Madison Memorial?
Police EROs 2019
Justin Creech, West; Rod Johnson, La Follette; Zulma Franco, East; Tray Turner, Memorial H.S.One of those lucky schools — more particularly, their students, parents, and faculty — will be freed of those troublesome school resource officers under a contract the school board is proposing with the Madison Police Department.
More:
Madison School Board members expressed “broad support” for at least one of Madison’s four high schools to go without a police officer stationed at the school as part of a new contract between the city and district, according to meeting minutes obtained by the Cap Times in an open records request.
In a closed session meeting on May 6, the Madison School Board discussed its negotiation strategies with the city over the renewal of a contract that has a school resource officer based at East, West, La Follette and Memorial high schools.
“There was broad support for working towards at least one school with no ERO/SRO,” Barbara Osborn, the recording secretary, wrote in the meeting minutes, which the Cap Times obtained Thursday.
Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results:
Mark Seidenberg, a UW-Madison professor and cognitive neuroscientist, has spent decades researching the way humans acquire language. He is blunt about Wisconsin’s schools’ ability to teach children to read: “If you want your kid to learn to read you can’t assume that the school’s going to take care of it. You have to take care of it outside of the school, if there’s someone in the home who can do it or if you have enough money to pay for a tutor or learning center.”
Theresa Morateck, literacy coordinator for the district, says the word “balanced” is one that’s been wrestled with for many years in the reading world.
Why are Madison’s Students Struggling to Read?
Mark Seidenberg, a UW-Madison professor and cognitive neuroscientist, has spent decades researching the way humans acquire language. He is blunt about Wisconsin’s schools’ ability to teach children to read: “If you want your kid to learn to read you can’t assume that the school’s going to take care of it. You have to take care of it outside of the school, if there’s someone in the home who can do it or if you have enough money to pay for a tutor or learning center.”
Theresa Morateck, literacy coordinator for the district, says the word “balanced” is one that’s been wrestled with for many years in the reading world.
“I think my perspective and the perspective of Madison currently is that balanced means that you’re providing time to explicitly teach those foundational skills, but also that’s not the end-all be-all of your program,” Morateck says.
According to the district, students in elementary school get 120 minutes of daily literacy instruction.
Lisa Kvistad, the district’s assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, lays out what those two hours look like for kindergarten, first and second grade. For 30 minutes, students focus on foundational skills including print awareness (the difference between letters, words and punctuation), phonemic awareness (the ability to hear, identify and make individual sounds), and phonics (correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters).
Then teachers move into a 15-minute group lesson on a topic the class is focusing on. That’s followed by a workshop in which students are broken up into different groups for 20 to 40 minutes.
In these workshops, says Kvistad, “students are in varying groups and approaching literacy acquisition through opportunities to work with the teacher, read independently, and engage in word study.”
That independent learning allows students to choose books at their assessed skill level, Kvistad says. The district also offers a supplemental online program called Lexia for students who want to work on phonics.
At the end of the workshop, teachers bring students together again to connect their independent or small group study with the mini-lesson they started with.
After reading, 30 to 50 minutes are dedicated to writing, which is also done in a workshop model. The 120 minutes are rounded out by about 20 minutes of “speaking, listening and handwriting.”
For third, fourth and fifth graders, the 120-minute block looks similar, except no time is spent on foundational skills — except for the continued ability to use Lexia.
Kvistad explains that getting the right balance of foundational skills and exposure to grade-level curriculum is an art.
“There’s always a temptation to do more phonics,” Kvistad says. But she says there are drawbacks to that: “Those little ones never get a chance to access grade level curriculum, to engage in rich dialogue with the students in class, to have experience with grade-level vocabulary.”
But for those who advocate for a purely science-based approach to teaching reading, children need to master foundational reading skills before they have any hope of progressing to the more advanced skills that are emphasized with balanced literacy.
Steven Dykstra of the Wisconsin Reading Coalition, an organization that advocates for science-based reading instruction, pulls no punches, calling balanced literacy the “current name for the bad way to teach reading.” He says it evolved from “whole language,” a now-discredited type of instruction.
“In whole language you would have taught no phonics, and when you read books with kids you would have taught them to guess and use pictures,” Dykstra says. “In balanced literacy you teach some phonics, but when you sit and read a book you still give priority to guessing and pictures as a way to identify words. And you resort to phonics as a last resort.”
The UW’s Seidenberg explores the complex science of reading in his book Language at the Speed of Sight.
“What happens when you become a skilled reader is that your knowledge of print and your knowledge of spoken language become deeply integrated in behavior and in the brain,” he tells Isthmus. “So that when you are successful at becoming a reader you have this close, intimate relationship between print and sound.”
Related:
2018: “The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”.
“Plenty of resources”. Madison has long spent far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, between $18 to 20K per student, depending on the district documents one reviews.
2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before
THE PRICE OF TEACHER MULLIGANS: “I DIDN’T STOP TO ASK MYSELF THEN WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO ALL THE KIDS WHO’D BEEN LEFT IN THE BASEMENT WITH THE TEACHER WHO COULDN’T TEACH”
– MICHELLE OBAMA.
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has granted thousands of elementary teacher reading content knowledge waivers.
Wisconsin elementary teachers are, by law, required to pass the Foundations of Reading exam. This requirement – our only teacher content knowledge imperative – is based on Massachusetts’ highly successful MTEL initiative.
An emphasis on adult employment.
Madison’s TAXPAYER sUpportEd K-12 School Climate
Over the last few days since I voiced my concerns about the poor language being used towards adults by our children and youth in our public schools (and at several school board meetings). I have received mostly positive feedback. However, I have also read comments by people who feel my concern about our children’s poor use of language is overstated, misguided and disrespectful.
Worse, I was referred to as a man who practices “respectability politics” and a “Black leader” who has “turned his back” on Black children and who “can no longer hear this voice [of Black youth], can no longer hear the concerns of the masses, can no longer concern [myself] with Black, often low-income, and poor people because [they] are not speaking the way [I] want them to speak?”
It was interesting reading this from people who clearly know very little if anything about me or my work, but whose children have directly benefited from years of my advocacy, and from specific programs I created or pushed to have established. ….
“As a father of five, I would never let (or condone) my children, or any other young person (or adult), direct hurtful language like that at me or another person without speaking up and correcting them. To see adults clapping for that behavior tonight turned my stomach inside out. I had to get up and leave, and take the mic to say a few words before I left.
“People, what are we thinking and what are we doing? Too many children are cursing out teachers and staff every day in our public schools and we are letting it happen, and making excuses for many children who do it.
“And for those who don’t like what I am saying, you can be mad but you can’t call me racist, and you definitely can’t call me crazy. Many of our young people in our public schools are benefiting directly from my years of hard work, advocacy and programs that I personally fought for and led the creation of. To sit there and hear young people who represent a demographic that I have worked and fought very hard for, for more than 30 years, curse out other people who are trying to help them…it broke my heart and made my heart sink into my stomach.
“Mothers, fathers, educators and community members, we cannot allow this type of poor behavior to continue unabated. We need to tell our young people that attitudes and behaviors like this WILL NOT BE TOLERATED, PERIOD. It’s not good for our children and their future, and it’s not good for our community and our schools. WE CAN ADVOCATE WITH PASSION, RESPECTFULLY. Onward.”
David Blaska summarizes a recent Isthmus article:
Dylan Brogan is the news reporter of the year so far. The reporter for Madison’s Isthmus publication ripped the bandage off the happy face Jennifer Cheatham puts on Madison’s public schools. He took some hair with it.
Brogan conducted 30 hours of interviews with dozens of Madison educators since, oh, about the April 2 school board election.
For all that, there is nothing new in his May 16 exposé for the weekly Isthmus, “A Rotten Year; Madison teachers report from the classroom.”
The classrooms are in chaos, but we knew that.
Teacher morale is plummeting, but we knew that.
Central administration will throw any teacher under the bus if race is involved, but we knew that.
The densely bureaucratic Behavior Education Plan only greases the school-to-prison pipeline, but we knew that.
We said that teachers are tired of being hit, ignored, taunted, and humiliated. We said that principals have lost control of their schools and teachers of their classrooms. We said a handful of misbehaving students can wreck the learning environment for everyone. We said central administration is interested only in making the numbers work.Endorsed by Madison’s liberal establishment
While spending far more than most, we have long tolerated disastrous reading results.
A majority of the Madison school board aborted the Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.
Much more, here
