Linda Flanagan:

When Paula Gosal took over as principal of the Chilliwack Middle School, she walked smack into the middle of a long-standing debate among the staff over awards. It wasn’t exactly a rumble that Gosal was tossed into so abruptly in the fall of 2016. Most of the teachers at this school for seventh- through ninth-graders in British Columbia had read the literature on awards, and were looking for feedback and support from their new principal. The majority wanted to do away with the school’s awards and awards assemblies, and needed the backing of their principal to make it happen.

“I did not have to be persuaded,” Gosal said. She called for a vote, and the staff unanimously decided to stop handing out awards.

Though data on the extent of school award-giving is scarce, the practice of delivering them is so customary that the Common Application to U.S. colleges includes spaces to report honors and other forms of recognition. Alongside their ubiquity, however, is abundant research showing that awards, rewards and other external incentives undermine intrinsic motivation.

“This is one of the most robust findings in social science—and also one of the most ignored,” wrote Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Pursuit of the trinket or prize extinguishes what might have been a flicker of internal interest in a subject, suffocating the genuine sources of motivation: mastery, autonomy and purpose. “To say ‘do this, and you’ll get that’ makes people lose interest in ‘this,’ ” said Alfie Kohn, author of Punished by Rewards. Awards are that much worse than rewards, Kohn added, because they are simply prizes made artificially limited.

The Chilliwack School District plans to spend C$153,673,539 during the 2017-2018 school year for about 14,000 students. (US$121,340,626). That’s $8,667 per student, or less than half of Madison’s nearly $20,000.

Amber Walker:

In a 5-2 decision on Monday, the Madison School Board voted to postpone the charter approval of Isthmus Montessori Academy.

The board wanted more clarity around the school’s proposed attendance area, financial and academic accountability standards at their three-year mark, and language in the proposal that asks for waivers that apply to early release and lesson planning time promised to all Madison Metropolitan School District teachers via the employee handbook.

IMA has until Aug. 21 to finish negotiations with the district to iron out the details. The board is expected to take up the vote again at its next regular meeting on Aug. 28.

If the board approves the charter, IMA, which is currently a private school, would cease operation and reopen as Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter School in the fall of 2018 serving students in 4K through ninth grade.

IMACS would be a free public charter school, operating under the authority of the Madison School Board.

Some history on (aborted) independent charter schools in Madison, including:

the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School and

the Studio School.

2009: “An emphasis on adult employment“.

Unfortunately, Madison continues to support a non diverse K-12 Governance model, this despite spending far more per student than most districts and tolerating long term, disastrous reading results.

Related: an Independent (!) Charter School RFP for Madison or Milwaukee.

Amber Walker:

MMSD also implemented new interviewing practices that assess not only a potential teacher’s knowledge in her content area, but her culturally responsive practices, including setting high and clear expectations for all students, acknowledging all students and connecting to students’ lives and cultural identity.

Hargrove-Krieghoff said the new competency and performance measures were a “game changer” for the district.

“We designed our overall set of competencies with those things in mind,” Hargrove-Krieghoff said.

In an emailed statement to the Cap Times, Cheatham reiterated her commitment to diversifying the district’s teaching staff.

“It is important to us as a district to have a staff that represents the diversity of our student population. It is common sense that students will benefit from interacting with and learning from teachers who look like them at school, and research supports it,” she said. “The benefits for African-American students to have even one African-American teacher in elementary school are long-lasting.”

Although Cheatham’s administration aims to increase the number of teachers of color in the district overall, some teachers are worried that change is not happening fast enough, particularly for African-American students.

Madison School District Administration (PDF)::

Stronger Professional Development (PD) Guidance-

maximizing the additional PD days- 6 week cycles

time for reflection and team planning
Continued Focus on Intensive Support-

Continued support for teachers K-8 in literacy

Support for Middle School Literacy
— Build capacity of principals and coaches to monitor and support literacy curriculum through professional development & learning labs

Special emphasis on acceleration in grades K-2 — Professional Development & Learning Labs — Software Support

Parent Links to Learning

9th Grade On (9OT) Track

Train school-based facilitators to deepen CLR practices through monthly PD for
all 9th grade core teachers

Direct support to 9th grade teacher teams to deepen 90T systems — Student Led Conferencing with Parents

Jennifer Wang:

Last November, the citizens of Madison supported a referendum to offset the drastic budget cuts forced upon our schools in recent years. The Madison Metropolitan School District has let class sizes expand for the past few years to cope with funding shortfalls. In this first budget cycle after the referendum, I ask the Madison School Board to use this money to reduce class sizes at the elementary, middle and high school levels.

The advantages of small class size are unassailable. Over the last decade, my three children have benefited enormously from the small classes at Midvale and Lincoln elementary schools. In 2007, when my daughter started kindergarten, she flourished in a class of 14 with enough additional support staff to produce a teacher/student ratio that rivaled any private school in the area. My children have spent their formative years in classrooms of between 15 and 18 with dedicated teachers who knew them well, who could assess their learning styles and differentiate lesson plans to meet their needs. These small classes allowed my children to thrive and set them up for success in middle and high school. Unfortunately, today many children in Madison’s schools, including some of our highest-poverty schools, are in classrooms that are much too large.

Madison’s budget and long term, disastrous reading results.

Midvale Lincoln.

MAP assessment results.

Karen Rivedal:

As executive director of the Foundation for Madison’s Public Schools, Melinda Heinritz leads a staff of five committed to increasing material resources and community support for local public education.

Since its creation in 2001 by a group of community leaders and former educators, the foundation has awarded $1.28 million in grants to schools and individual teachers for innovative projects that would not otherwise be supported by the Madison School District’s core budget.

The foundation has also set up endowment funds for each of the district’s 50 schools, and most schools have one or more community partners paired up with them under the foundation’s signature Adopt-A-School program.

Much more on Madison’s approximately $460M budget, herehttps://mmsdbudget.wordpress.com/.

Cristian Cruz:

Following a contentious 5-2 vote by the Madison School Board, James C. Wright Middle School will be the first school in the Madison Metropolitan School District to require students to wear uniforms.

Wright principal Angie Hicks told the board that the new uniform policy will decrease distractions for her students and, as such, aid in closing the school’s achievement gap, one representative of schools across the county and state.

First proposed in 2013, the uniform policy will go into effect in the 2017-2018 academic year. It will require students to dress in white, black or royal blue shirts and khaki or black slacks, shorts, skorts or skirts. The policy will also require Wright teachers to follow a similar code.

Amber Walker:

Though the Madison Metropolitan School District revised its advanced learner program in recent years, some schools are still struggling to provide tailored classroom instruction for qualified students.

The district defines advanced learners as students who demonstrate, or have the potential to demonstrate, high performance in one or more areas.

MMSD contracted with the consulting firm RMC Research to evaluate its advanced learner program for students in kindergarten through eighth grade during the 2015-2016 school year. That included surveying teachers, advanced learners and their parents about the effectiveness of the program.

Laurie Fellenz, interim director of advanced learning, and Lisa Kvistad, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, presented survey findings to the Madison School Board on Monday night.

The evaluation found that the district’s new process for identifying advanced learners decreased the number of students eligible for the program but provided enrolled students a more tailored experience. At the same time, the survey found an increase in the percentage of advanced learners from underrepresented populations, including African-American and Latino students.

Related: TAG Complaint, English 10 and Small Learning Communities.

Tony Evers (PDF):

1. Why are you running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction?

I’ve been an educator all my adult life. I grew up in small town Plymouth, WI. Worked at a canning factory in high school, put myself through college, and married my kindergarten sweetheart, Kathy-also a teacher.

I taught and became a principal in Tomah, was an administrator in Oakfield and Verona, led CESA 6, and have twice been elected State Superintendent. I’ve been an educator all across Wisconsin, and no matter where I worked, I put kids first. Always.

But I have to tell you, I worry for the future. Years of relentless attacks on educators and public schools have left a generation of young people disinterested in teaching. The words and actions of leaders matter.

We have to restore respect to the teaching profession.

For teachers in the field, endless requirements and policies from Washington, Madison, and district offices are drowning our best educators in paperwork and well-intended “policy solutions” you never asked for.

I know we need to lighten the load.

As your State Superintendent, I have always tried to find common ground, while holding firm to the values we share.

I worked with Gov. Doyle to increase funding for schools and with Gov. Walker around reading and school report cards. But when Walker wanted to use school report cards to expand vouchers and take over low performing schools, we pushed back together-and we won.
When Walker proposed Act 10, I fought back. From the halls of the Capitol to rallies outside, my union thug wife and I stood with the people of Wisconsin.

I champion mental health in schools, fight for school funding reform, and work to restore
respect to the teaching profession.

But I am not a fool. The world has changed.

In my previous elections, we faced weak opponents we outspent. I won 62% of the vote and all but the three counties voted Evers last time.

But last November, Diane Hendricks and Besty DeVos dropped $5 million into the “Reform America PAC” at the last minute and took out Russ Feingold. Devos is likely to be Education Secretary and Henricks has the ear of the President.

And these people are coming for us.

They’ve recruited a field of conservative candidates vying for their support.

The folks at the conservative Wisconsin Institution for Law & Liberty are doing everything they can to undermine the independent authority of the elected state superintendent. These folks have powerful friends and allies through the state and federal government.

But we ore going to win.

We hired great a campaign team in Wisconsin. We’re raising more money than ever, and we
will need to raise more. We’re mobilizing voters and activating social media.

While Wisconsin went for Mr. Trump, those voters overwhelmingly passed 80% of the referenda questions. They love their public schools. That is what we need to connect with to win.

But I need your help. You’ve stood with me before, and I need your help again. I need you to do more than you’ve ever done before. This is the last office they don’t hold, and it is the first electoral battle in the new world. We cannot afford to lose.

2. Do you believe that public schools are sufficiently funded? If no, describe your plan to provide sufficient funds?

No.

My current state budget request restates our Fair Funding proposal. Under my proposal, all students will receive a minimum amount of aid. To provide an extra lift for some students, the general aid formula will weight students living in poverty.

Additionally, the per-pupil categorical aid will be weighted to account for foster kids, English learners and students that come from impoverished families.

Furthermore, changes to the summer school aid formula will incentivize all schools, but
especially those districts that have students who need extra time to achieve at higher levels to engage in fun, summer learning activities.

The people of Wisconsin are on record that they want to keep their schools strong. An
astounding 88% of the districts (600,000 voters) approved revenue limit exemptions just this last November. Ultimately, I come down on the side of local control and support the eventual elimination of revenue limits. In my budget proposal, I requested a reasonable increase in revenue limits. In the future, these increases should be tied to the cost of living.

3. Madison schools have experienced increasing attrition over the past five years and increasing difficulty in attracting highly qualified candidates in a growing number of certification areas. What factors do you have as the causes of this shortage? What measures will you take to promote the attraction and retention of highly qualified teachers and other school employees?

There are several main factors impacting these issues. The first is the negative rhetoric that occurs all too often around the teaching profession. The second is that Wisconsin educators’ pay has taken a significant hit in recent years -an actual decrease of over 2 percent over the past few years (and changes to benefits and retirement have further eroded take home pay). Our current high school students pick up on this, and increasingly they are not look at teaching as a viable career path, and in Wisconsin, our teacher preparation programs are reporting record lows.

We need to continue to highlight the excellent work our teachers do each and every day and bring back teacher voice in to what goes on in the classroom. I am currently working with a small group of Wisconsin educators, including several from Madison, on a project we are calling “Every Teacher a Leader,” an effort to highlight and promote instances of excellent teacher voice and leadership. Let’s highlight the leadership and critical decision-making our educators use every day in their roles. The cultures of our schools must be strong and support teachers as they work with our students. I continue to advocate for additional resources in our schools to address the most pressing needs of our students and to provide resources for teacher to do their jobs.

4. What strategies will you enact to support and value Wisconsin’s large, urban school districts?

I have championed several initiatives to support large, urban school districts, including
expanding access to:

Small class sizes and classroom support staff to help teachers effectively manage behavioral issues;

Restorative justice and harm reduction strategies that reduce the disproportionate impact of discipline on student of color;

Fun summer learning opportunities for students to accelerate learning or recover credits (increased funding, streamlined report requirements);

Community schools, wrap around services and out-of-school time programs that because schools are the center of our communities;

Culturally-responsive curriculum and profession development that helps educators meet the needs of diverse students;

Mental health services and staff integrated with schools to meet students’ needs.

I also support school finance policies that recognize that many students in poverty, English learners, foster youth, and students with special needs require additional resources to succeed.

Finally, I strongly support a universal accountability system for schools enrolling
publicly-funded students. All schools should have to meet the same high bar.

5. What strategies will you enact to support and value Wisconsin’s rural school districts?

In addition to the proposing the Fair Funding changes, my budget:

Fully-funds the sparsity categorical aid and expands it to more rural schools;

Expands the high cost transportation programs; and

Provides funds for rural educator recruitment and retention.

6. How do you feel about the present Educator Effectiveness (teacher) evaluation system? What changes would you like to see to that system?

I support the Educator Effectiveness (EE) system. It was created with input from teachers, administrators as well as school board members and legislators. I believe we have administered the EE program with great care, listening to stakeholders from across that state.

That said, I believe changes need to be made. Recently, I have recommended that results from the state achievement test (Forward Exam) not be a required element in the evaluation process.

We must also continually message that the EE system was created to support professionals through a learning centered continuous improvement process. Evaluation systems implemented in isolation as an accountability or compliance exercise, will not improve educator practice or student outcomes.

7. What is your plan to work with Milwaukee Public Schools to assure that all students receive a quality public education?

While achievement gaps persist across the state, our city of the first class presents unique challenges and requires a multi-pronged approach. Milwaukee is ground zero for our state’s efforts to accomplish major reductions in achievement gaps.

I have worked closely with Dr. Darienne Driver, MTEA and Milwaukee community leaders to support improvement efforts. We are working hand-in-hand to provide more learning time when needed, expand access to summer school, establish community schools, and create a best-in-state educator workforce.

We must continue to have honest conversations about our challenges and provide the resources and support for improvement. Divisive legislative solutions from Washington and Madison have not worked. We need more support for our students and schools, not less.

8. Do you believe the position of State Superintendent of Public Instruction should continue to be an elected position as currently provided in the State Constitution?

Absolutely yes.

The creators of our constitution got it right. Public education was so important they made the State Superintendent independently elected and answerable directly to the people. However, Governors and special interests always try to usurp this authority. The Supreme Court has consistently held up the independent power of the State Superintendent-mostly recently in the Coyne case advanced by MTI. Undeterred by their loss, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is currently working to circumvent the authority of the State Superintendent over the federal ESSA law. Rest assured we are fighting back and must again prevail.

9. Describe your position on the voucher program?

Powerful special interests and the majorities in Washington and Madison have spent years cutting revenue, growing bonding, and expanding entitlement programs like school vouchers. The result: historic cuts to education followed a slow trickle of financial support for public school amidst the statewide expansion of vouchers.

My friend former Sen. Dale Schultz often said, “We can’t afford the school system we have,
how can we afford two-a public and private one?”

It is a good question. A recent Fiscal Bureau reports indicate that over 200 districts (almost half) would have received more state aid without the changes in voucher funding that shifted cost to loca I districts.

When we move past the ideological battles, we’re left with tough choices about priorities and responsibilities. Bottom line: we have a constitutional obligation to provide an education for every kid in this state, from Winter to West Salem.

Our friends and neighbors are stepping up to pass referenda at historic rates to keep the lights on in rural schools. It is an admirable, but unsustainable effort that leaves too many kids behind. Expanding vouchers while underfunding rural schools exacerbates the problem.

That said, we all know the current majorities and proposed U.S Education Secretary support voucher expansion, so here are some key principles for moving forward:

1. The state should adequately fund our public school system before expanding vouchers;

2. The state, rather than local school districts, should pay the full cost of the voucher program;

3. Accountability should apply equally to all publicly-funded schools, including voucher schools;

Finally, we should talk more about the great things Wisconsin schools are doing and less about vouchers. They suck the air out of the room and allowing them to dominate the
conversation is unhelpful.

Around 96 percent of publicly-funded students go to a school governed by a local school board. Regardless of whether legislators support or oppose vouchers, they need to support our public schools. That’s where our focus needs to be and what I will champion.

10. Describe your position on independent charter schools.

In general, charter schools work best when authorized by a locally-elected school board that understands their community’s needs, and is accountable to them.

As both State Superintendent and a member of the Board of Regents, I am concerned the new UW System chartering authority could become controversial and disruptive. New schools are best created locally, not from a distant tower overlooking the city.

11. Wisconsin teacher licensing has the reputation as being one of the most rigorous and respected systems in the country. Recently, proposals were made that would allow any individual with a bachelor’s degree or work experience in trades to obtain a teaching license. Do you support these proposals? Why or why not?

I do not support any proposal that would ignore pedagogical skills as a key component of any preparation program. Content knowledge is not enough. A prospective teacher must know “how” to teach as well as “what’ to teach.

12. Teachers report a significant increase in mandated meetings and “professional development” sessions that are often unrelated or not embedded to the reality of their daily work with children. What will you do as State Superintendent to provide teachers with the time needed to prepare lessons, collaborate with colleagues, evaluate student work, and reflect on their practices?

When I travel the state and talk to educators, I hear this sentiment a lot, but it’s quickly followed by an important caveat: When educators believe that the meeting, the professional development opportunity, the extra responsibility, or the new idea will truly make a difference for kids they serve, they become the first and best champion of it–always.

We absolutely must find ways to lighten the load for our teachers so that the work we do out of the classroom is meaningful, manageable and powerful for kids. My Every Teacher a Leader Initiative focuses on highlighting cultures that support teacher leadership, and this often means that a principal or a superintendent has created systems that value and honor the expertise teachers bring to an initiative. They involve teachers early in decisions rather than convening them after a decision is made to implement it.

I just heard from an educator in a school district that is receiving national attention for its dramatic academic improvement over the past five years. When asked what the recipe for success was, she said the superintendent convened a team of veteran educators on his first day, listened to what they needed, worked long and hard to meet those needs, andkept them involved the whole way. That’s it.

13. Do you support restoring the rights of public sector workers to collectively bargain over wages, hours and conditions of employment?

Yes.

I have been a champion for collective bargain and workers’ rights my entire career. I signed the recall petition over Act 10 – and I haven’t changed my mind about it.

14. Are you interested in receiving MTI Voters endorsement? If so, why?

MTI has been a great partner of mine over the years. I would be honored to continue that collaboration going forward. Additionally, I have five grand-kids Madison Public Schools, and I want to them to continue to be proud of the strong relationship I have with Madison educators.

15. Are you interested in receiving financial support for your campaign from MTl-Voters?

Yes, my opponents will be seeking funding from organizations that have very deep pockets and MTI full financial support is more important than ever.

16. Is there anything else you’d like MTI members to know about your candidacy and why you are seeking election to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction?

I hope our work together, mutual commitment, and shared values continue for another four years.

Much more on Tony Evers, here.

The 2017 candidates for Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Superintendent are Tony Evers [tonyforwisconsin@gmail.com;], Lowell Holtz and John Humphries [johnhumphriesncsp@gmail.com].

League of Women Voters questions.

Wisconsin Reading Coalition:

UW-Madison’s Mark Seidenberg, Vilas Research Professor and Donald O. Hebb Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, has a long-standing commitment to using the science of reading to improve educational outcomes. Examples of insightful publications from Seidenberg and his colleagues in recent years include:

Language Variation and Literacy Learning: The Case of African American English 2013

Impact of Dialect Use on a Basic Component of Learning to Read 2015

Influences on Spelling: Evidence from Homophones 2014

The Science of Reading and its Educational Implications 2013 PowerPoint

Seidenberg’s new book, Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, And What Can Be Done About It, will be released in January of 2017. (Preorders are available on sites such as Target, Walmart, and Amazon.) Our New Year’s wish for Wisconsin is that this book is widely read and impacts reading education in the state.

Two media articles, The Ignored Science That Could Help Close the Achievement Gap in The Atlantic, and Seidenberg: To Improve Literacy, Teachers Must Embrace the Science Behind Reading in the Nonprofit Quarterly, focus on Mark Seidenberg’s new book, Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, And What We Can Do About It.

Mark Seidenberg’s new book, Language at the Speed of Sight, topped our 2016 holiday gift wish list. David Kipen’s review in the New York Times makes us even more anxious for our copies to arrive! Here are a couple of excerpts from the review:

Too often, according to Mark Seidenberg’s important, alarming new book, “Language at the Speed of Sight,” Johnny can’t read because schools of education didn’t give Johnny’s teachers the proper tools to show him how. Economic inequality is a big problem, too, of course, but kindergartners may be grandparents before that can be redressed. Mr. Seidenberg, a veteran cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, makes a strong case for how brain science can help the teaching profession in the meantime.

We learn that, among other things, dyslexia is all too real and should be caught as early as possible; English spelling is a sadistic but nonlethal impediment to slow learners; the reading of books to children is insufficient but indispensable; and some modern pedagogical theories are “zombies that cannot be stopped by conventional weapons such as empirical disconfirmation.”

Read the entire review here. Wisconsin Reading Coalition . . . that’s everyone reading this . . . gets a special mention! We are honored to be fellow travelers with Professor Seidenberg on the quest to support teachers and students with the best information possible to improve reading instruction.

Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham (PDF):

BRMS was founded to empower its students to thrive as citizens, entrepreneurs, leaders, collaborators, and innovators, working to restore the natural world and to better the cultural environment while creating just, nourishing, and sustainable communities. Today, BRMS embraces this through an urban agriculture lens and a philosophy of participatory, place-based learning through real-life, inquiry-driven projects designed by students and teachers emphasizing social change within the local community. Currently, there are 75 students attending BRMS (36% Hispanic, 25% African American, 17% bi- or multiracial, 17% white, 37% ELL, 27% SPED, and 75% low-income).

On October 24th, BRMS submitted their charter renewal application. Upon receipt, the MMSD Charter Review Committee scored the application using the publically available renewal rubric. Ultimately, BRMS was found to have areas that did not meet expectations. In early November, the MMSD Chief of Staff met with school leadership and governing council members to share the feedback and next steps for resubmission.

On Number 17th, BRMS resubmitted their charter renewal application based on the feedback given on the original submission. The Charter Review Committee scored the final applications again. Summary conclusions are below.

Much more on Badger Rock Middle School.

Madison School District Administration (PDF):

Project Description: MMSD has provided funding to support coursework in the content and teaching knowledge of middle school teachers of math. Toward that goal, a partnership was formed back in 2010 between the District, the UW-Madison School of Education, the UW- Madison Department of Mathematics, and the University of Wisconsin Extension – Office of Education Outreach and Partnerships. MMSD will continue this for the 2016-17 school year and continue to offer math coursework for teachers to participate. The courses consists of a five course sequence (Number, Ratio, Geometry, Algebra, and Experimentation, Conjecture & Reasoning) with two courses being offered each semester. MMSD will continue to provide some financial support for teachers in each class with priority determined by; 1) middle school teacher working with an existing condition of employment, 2) middle school math teachers, and 3) teachers who began the program in previous years.

NOTE: There is a significant reduction in the estimate of this program from the 2015-2016 school year to the 2016-2017 school year. As a reminder, the change for this program and financial support moving forward was shared with the Board April 2016. The model continues the five course MSMS Program using non-credit courses for teachers currently enrolled in the program. This reduces the annual operating budget to $27,000. In addition, the full-time Math teacher leader’s responsibilities have been repositioned to provide support and professional development for middle school math teachers and for algebra teachers.

Talent management has been working with principals to select best candidates for current and future hiring. Middle school math teachers are now provided with standards aligned curricular resources and job embedded coaching.

Related: Singapore Math, Math Forum, Connected Math, Discovery Math.

Madison School District Administration (PDF):

The University of Wisconsin System is exempt from complying with the requirements of the District’s Contract Compliance Plan.

Add an additional training day for new teachers (for a total of 3) to better meet the needs of
and provide information to staff new to the District.

Madison School District Administration (PDF):

Create language to provide for a $25 per hour rate for working on Central Office developed curriculum and attending Central Office professional development that is aligned to District priorities. The purpose of paying a higher hourly rate than the extended employment rate is to encourage participation and recognize the importance of Central Office curriculum work and professional development on District priorities.

Molly Beck:

Over all, Evers is seeking about a $707 million increase in spending including a $525 million increase in general school aid and other changes that would comprise a funding formula overhaul. The request seeks a 2.7 percent increase in overall spending in the 2017-18 school year and a 5.4 percent increase in the 2018-19 school year.

The request marks the fourth time Evers has asked the Legislature to change the state’s funding formula.

Part of the overhaul would eliminate a special funding stream to pay for students living in high poverty and factor more money into the main funding formula for the same purpose.

The budget also asks for increases in state-imposed revenue caps and would set a minimum amount of money the state sends to schools, regardless of how wealthy the district is. Each district would receive a minimum of $3,000 per student under the request.

It is unfortunate two recent articles on the upcoming Madison School District tax & spending increase referendum lack data, such as:

• Total Spending for the current budget ($449,482,373.22 more) – about $18,000/student. Chicago spends about $14,336/student, Boston $20,707 and Long Beach $12,671/student.
• Historic Spending Changes (spending increases every year)
• Academic Outcomes vs. Spending
• Comparison with other Districts
• Middleton property taxes are about 13% less than a comparable Madison home.

Doug Erickson:

To offset cuts in state aid and the tightening revenue caps, Act 10 eliminated collective bargaining over benefits. State employees and other public workers without an existing contract were required to start contributing to their pensions. Once a district’s collectively bargained contract expired, the district also could do things such as switch insurance providers, increase employee benefit contributions, and change work rules — all without needing union approval.

“It took the handcuffs off school boards,” Nygren said.

In Madison, Act 10 ushered in significant changes. Faced with the state-imposed cuts but before Act 10 took effect, employee unions agreed during contract negotiations to major concessions in 2011-12. That included a salary freeze (saving $4 million) and a requirement that employees begin contributing 5.8 percent of their salary toward their state pensions (saving $11 million).

The union also agreed to drop Wisconsin Physicians Service as an insurance provider in 2012, a $5 million savings. WPS was the most costly plan the district offered, and employees who had opted for it had been paying a portion of their monthly premiums.

Union members also had agreed back then to begin paying a percentage of the premiums for the three other insurance options, although the School Board chose not to go that route at that point. That changed this year. The School Board is, for the first time, now requiring all employees to pay something toward their monthly health insurance premiums.

The percentage varies by employee group, with teachers paying 3 percent (6 percent if they don’t participate in the district’s wellness program). This followed the expiration of the district’s final union contract over the summer.

Doug Keillor, executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., the district’s teachers union, said Act 10 alienated public employees and took a “wrecking ball” to public schools.

“The district could keep cutting pay and could keep increasing health insurance contributions, so from that standpoint, the district has not transferred as much of the costs onto the backs of employees as they could,” he said. “But you have to first back up and say, ‘How do you build a quality public school district?’ A district needs to attract people into this profession and keep them. The Legislature didn’t give school boards the tools to do that.”

Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Brookfield, a member of the Senate Education Committee, argues that most of the discussions about public school funding are wrongly framed from a perspective that more money automatically means higher student achievement.

“Our reforms are working,” she said. “We’ve given the school districts through Act 10 the tools to do more with the resources they have. Those districts that have embraced that are doing really well.”

Amber Walker:

Public education advocates are organizing in support of the upcoming K-12 operational referendum for the Madison Metropolitan School District, which is necessary to maintain a quality education for local students, they say.

On Nov. 8, the district is asking voters to permanently raise its revenue limit authority by $26 million.

The district proposes that this change happens incrementally over the next four school years. MMSD seeks an additional $5 million per year for the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 school years and an additional $8 million per year for the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years.

Commentary on redistributed state tax collections and spending.

Madison School District 2016 tax & spending increase referendum content. Channel 3000.

I’ve not seen total Madison School District spending data, much less history, amongst the referendum content.

Erin Richards:

On a mid-September morning, Pulaski High School on Milwaukee’s south side appeared peaceful and studious, its hallways free of roaming students and Principal Lolita Patrick holding sway in front of the auditorium.

Teachers instruct with the doors open now. Students wear uniforms, suspensions and incidents are down and the lunchroom is far more civilized this year, she said.

Those are small but meaningful steps for Pulaski, a struggling high school embarking on a big, urgent turnaround while hosting a new upstairs neighbor: Carmen Southeast, the third campus of the Milwaukee-based Carmen Schools of Science and Technology charter network. Downstairs, Pulaski is working on cementing an International Baccalaureate program into its curriculum.

The co-location deserves particular attention because the proposal to put Carmen in Pulaski drew a pitched fight last fall between Carmen supporters and the teachers union. Carmen is a popular, high-expectations charter school that wanted to add a third campus. Pulaski is a traditional high school with extra space because of declining enrollment. Patrick and MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver were in favor of the co-location, but the Milwaukee School Board was split. A key member changed his mind, and a narrow 5-4 vote let the partnership proceed.

Sarah Karp

Over the past weekend, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools announced that results from the NWEA assessment show that 60 percent of students are performing above the national average in reading and 50 percent in math. This is an improvement since last year and the best the district has done since it began using the NWEA in 2013.

One wonders how Madison (about $18k), which spends substantially more than Chicago per student, compares?

Chicago Public Schools:

This past school year, CPS students achieved record attainment levels on math and reading, and exceeded national averages of student growth. These results are all-time high scores for CPS, and prove that the hard work of our students, educators, and families is paying off.

More than half of CPS students are meeting or exceeding national achievement averages on this test. This year’s scores represent a jump of 13.5 percentage points in Reading and 9.5 percentage points in Math since 2013 – continuing the exceptional progress our students have made in recent years.

Besides shattering District records, these scores show CPS students outpacing their peers nationally in academic growth. This success can be traced to their own dedication, the commitment of their teachers and principals, and a record-high attendance rate of 93.4 percent in the 2015-2016 School Year.

http://www.cps.edu/schooldata.

Doug Erickson:

The annual report is a selective rather than exhaustive view of the district, with only some grades and some demographic groups highlighted in detail.

Chris Rickert:

An increasingly diverse Madison School District student body will see at least 55 new teachers of color next year — a major increase in minority hiring from the year before.

If those concerned about the district’s long-standing racial achievement gaps are looking for people to thank for this improvement, they might as well put Gov. Scott Walker on their list.

Much more on Act 10.

Nahima Marchal:

UW Madison’s Multicultural Center — a space designed to “ensure students of all racial and cultural backgrounds” feel welcomed at the university — held a special meeting on Monday to help students process the past week’s of racially-tinged events, which included the targeted killing of five police officers in Dallas and the fatal police shootings of two black men in St Paul, Minnesota and Baton Rouge, La.

But for all the talk of inclusivity, the support meet-ups were — disconcertingly — split up by racial groups.

In a post that has since been deleted off of the official UW-M Facebook page, the Center described the meetings as a space where all students and teachers could gather to discuss and reflect on recent events. “All are welcome and there will be affinity spaces for people of color and for white people,” the announcement said.

According to the post, the center offered two separate “processing” sessions — one for white UW employees in the morning followed by another one for white students in the afternoon, and another two for minority students, faculty, and staff.

3.7MB 2016-2017 Budget Book (PDF):

Focus on Reading in Kindergarten through Second Grade
For the first time, all kindergarten through second grade teachers at our highest needs schools will meet quarterly in grade levels for professional development and time to plan and collaborate together. They will also use new computer adaptive software designed to supplement core instruction and ensure students are building foundational skills in the early grades.

MAP and ACT in Context
MAP: In all categories but one, we are far above the national average for growth.
ACT: More students than ever are taking the ACT. With participation rates 25% above the national average, scores are in the 60th percentile nationally. Participation increased by 8% overall.

GOAL 1: Every student is on-track to graduate as measured by student growth and achievement at key milestones.

GOAL 2: Every student has access to a challenging and well-rounded education as measured by programmatic access and participation data.

Launched targeted professional development and planning on early reading for all teachers in kindergarten through second grade and computer adaptive software aimed at early literacy at our 13 highest need elementary schools

Selected elementary math curriculum and new reading resources for middle schools

I’ve always found it amazing how often the District swaps curriculum.

The emphasis on reading is welcome, but are we making progress in addressing Madison’s, long term, disastrous reading results?

It has long been a challenge to find the District’s total spending. This year, while somewhat improved (page 12) still lacks “Construction” spending.

Two budget tables are presented below and on the following page. These tables provide a high level overview of the 2016-17 budget proposal and are intended to serve as an introduction to the budget discussion which follows.

The first table, 2016-17 All Funds Summary, captures all budget activity for MMSD with the exception of the Construction Fund (reported elsewhere to maintain comparability). This table is designed to report on the ‘total budget picture’ for MMSD.

The second table, 2016-17 Operating Funds Summary, sharpens the focus to just the operating funds (defined as General Fund + Special Education Fund, less interfund transfers). This fund captures the basic operations of the district. It excludes the Debt Service, Construction, Food Service and Community Service funds. This table is designed to report on the ‘core operations’ of MMSD.

Presumably, all taxpayer dollars spent by the Madison School District support it’s mission, educating our children….

Madison plans to enroll 25,076 students for the 2016-2017 school year. The Administration plans to spend $_____ per student.

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email:

One City Early Learning Centers of Madison, Wisconsin will be the first U.S. pilot site for the ground­breaking AnjiPlay curriculum. One City will feature environments and materials designed by AnjiPlay program founder Ms. Cheng Xueqin, and One City teachers and staff will receive training from Ms. Cheng and Dr. Chelsea Bailey of AnjiPlay World. Additionally, a series of AnjiPlay related events will be held in Madison from July 20­26, 2016 making the city of Madison a leader in bringing the AnjiPlay approach to children outside of China.

AnjiPlay is a comprehensive educational approach grounded in a philosophy of love,risk,joy,reflectionandengagement.AnjiPlayiscurrentlythefull­timecurriculumof 130 schools serving 14,000 children ages 3­6 in Anji County, China. The AnjiPlay approach was developed over a period of 15 years by Ms. Cheng, Director of Pre­primary Education for Anji County. It was recognized by the President of China in 2014 with the National Award for Achievement in Early Childhood Education and will be adapted as a national curricular standard in China this year. Over the past two years, the world has begun to learn about AnjiPlay through conferences and talks at Mills College, Stanford University, Columbia University and MIT.

One City is a new preschool utilizing a two­-generation model to prepare children, ages 1 to 5 years old, for school and life success, while working in partnership with parents and the broader community to move its children’s families forward. One City believes that strong families and neighborhoods produce strong children. Presently, the school is serving 30 children on the South Side of Madison, Wisconsin, one of the most racially, ethnically and economically diverse neighborhoods in Wisconsin. It will grow to serve 110 children in its present location, with an eye to serving more than 1,000 children in Dane County, Wisconsin in the next 10 years.

One City CEO and Founder Mr. Kaleem Caire and AnjiPlay founder Ms. Cheng Xueqin first met during Ms. Cheng’s February 2016 visit to Madison, WI in a meeting organized by Dr. Marianne Bloch, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin­Madison. Ms. Cheng was deeply moved by Mr. Caire’s commitment to ensuring access to affordable, high quality preschools in partnership with parents and the community. Mr. Caire was similarly moved by Ms.Cheng’s vision of how complex, self­organized play can shape the global future of early childhood education. Mr. Caire and Ms. Cheng agreed on­the­spot to work together to bring the joys of complex learning through true, creative and innovative play to the children of Madison.

Mr. Caire stressed that “It is important to us that our children develop the knowledge, habits, skills, consciousness, and passion for learning, and learning about all matter of different things, at a very young age. We also want active learning taking place, as we look to nurture more creative, innovative and analytical thinkers, doers and leaders among our children. Through AnjiPlay, our children get to learn and play while creating their own play every day. Through Anji, we can accomplish our mission and goals.”

Ms. Cheng added, “children benefit from love in their environments, love expressed by one another, by families, by teachers, by schools and by communities. Children must also be trusted to take risks and encouraged to seek their own understanding of the world. Children should enjoy challenging, open­ended environments and materials. All children should have access to these opportunities and resources. It is their right. In Anji, our views of childhood and approach to early childhood education involve entire communities and particularly the efforts of leaders in the community like Kaleem Caire. I am grateful that he has committed to providing all of the children in his community with access to the joys of a childhood filled with love, risk and discovery.”

Training of One City teachers in the AnjiPlay approach began in June and will continue through the summer of 2017. Dr. Bailey with work closely with Mr. Bryce Pickett, One City Director of AnjiPlay, and the One City teaching staff on site and virtually throughout the year, including site visits to the kindergartens of Anji, China. The first shipment of AnjiPlay materials will arrive in Madison from Anji during the second week of July. These sophisticated, minimally structured, nature­based materials were designed and developed by Ms. Cheng over 15 years of testing and observation in the kindergartens of China. These materials have been further standardized by RISD professor and noted toy designer Cas Holman.

Ms. Cheng will visit Madison from July 19 to 23 to take part in training of One City’s staff. Ms. Cheng, Dr. Bailey and Mr. Caire will be available to members of the press for interviews and comment. Ms. Cheng will participate in a series of events and activities during her visit to Madison, including a public presentation “The Benefits of Risky Play” hosted by the Madison Public Library (Saturday, July 23 from 2:30pm – 4:00pm, Central Library).

CLICK HERE: Download Flier of Madison Public Library Event
A selection of high­resolution images: www.anjiplay.com/pressroom
More information about AnjiPlay: www.anjiplay.com
More information about One City Early Learning Centers: www.onecityearlylearning.org

Molly Beck:

More than 700 students in the Madison School District opted out in 2015, part of the 8,104 public school students who opted out statewide, a substantial increase from the 87 and 583 students, respectively, who opted out last year, state and school district data show.

The surge nationwide in recent years represents a movement of parents opposing testing in growing numbers. Opposition to the number of tests given, how scores are used by lawmakers in determining school accountability, and using scores to evaluate teachers contributes to the growing numbers nationwide.

The increase in Wisconsin also came as lawmakers moved to get rid of the Badger Exam, Wisconsin’s version of the Smarter Balanced exam that was developed using questions from a consortium of states aligned to Common Core, which state Superintendent Tony Evers adopted in 2010.

Statewide data is available here.

PDF slides from a recent Madison School District Quarterly Board retreat. Readers may wish to understand “MAP” or “Measure of Academic Progress” [duck duck go SIS 2012 Madison and Waunakee results]

Using MAP for Strategic Framework Milestones and SIP Metrics

Feedback from various stakeholders has led us to examine the use of MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) to measure Strategic Framework Goal #1: Every student is on track to graduate as measured by student growth and achievement at key milestones. In particular, we have received three specific questions regarding our use of MAP data for Strategic Framework Milestones and SIP Metrics for 2016-17:

1. What is the best way to measure growth on MAP?

2. How should the district and schools set MAP goals for growth?

3. How should the district and schools set MAP goals for proficiency?

4. Should we track progress based on Proficient-Advanced or Basic-Proficient-Advanced?

In this document, we summarize the key issues for each of these questions and provide our recommendations.
1. What is the best way to measure growth on MAP?

Currently, MMSD uses the percent of students meeting or exceeding fall to spring growth targets on the MAP assessment as both a Strategic Framework Milestone and School Improvement Plan (SIP) metric. In addition, this metric receives significant attention in our public reporting on MAP in other venues and teachers have been trained over the past several years to use it to measure progress at the classroom and student level. We have included growth as a complement to MAP proficiency; it allows us to look not just at how students are performing, but also improvement during the year.

For MAP growth, our initial growth trajectory involved a 10 percentage point improvement each year for the district. This goal has extended to SIPs for the past three years, as schools near district averages have received the goal recommendation of 10% improvement; that recommendation changed to 5% starting in 2015-16. The graph to the right illustrates our original trajectory of 10 percentage points a year, our recommended goals for each year (the previous year’s actual result plus an improvement of 10%), and our actual results from each year.

This graph shows us that the original plan of 10% improvement in growth per year would have placed us around 80% in the current school year. Although we believe in setting ambitious goals, the idea that we would continue to improve 10 percentage points every year likely was not realistic, and now that we are around 60% of students meeting growth targets, we may want to consider a lower target than 10 percentage points each year, as even 5 percentage points is relatively large.

Almost all schools set goals for MAP growth that aligned with a district recommendation: 5%, 10%, or 15%. In addition, we see that very few schools actually achieved growth improvements of 5% or more, with changes in growth generally clustering around 0%.

Recommendation: Schools/groups within 10 percentage points of the MAP growth threshold would receive a recommendation for 2% improvement and schools/groups more than 10 percentage points from the threshold would receive a recommendation for 5% improvement.

## On the other hand, one might view this discussion positively, compared to the use of “facts and figures” ten years ago, in the Math Forum.

2015-16 Analysis: Equitable Distribution of Staffing.

Overview:

Call to Action: Together as a community, we can commit to ensuring all of our students are successful. We must work in partnership, creating an organized effort to lift up our students of color, especially our African American students.

Technology plan One Pager:

The MMSD Information and Technology plan undergirds all three of the goals and five priority areas in the Strategic Framework. The plan includes deliberate preparation, implementation, and monitoring phases to ensure each project’s success. We are learning from emerging best practices, building on successes, spreading out costs and addressing key challenges that arise. Technology is a powerful tool for enhancing teaching and learning and meeting students’ needs in creative, innovative and flexible ways. We are committed to providing more equitable access to technology for all students.

The first cohort (G1) began device implementation this school year after a full year of planning and targeted professional learning. Staff and students from other schools are in need of devices to access core digital resources, intervention programs, linguistic resources, and just-in-time learning. To continue progress towards equitable access and device implementation as stated in the original Tech Plan, we would like to phase in the next cohort of schools (G2) in January 2017 by instating the following actions:

Technology plan budget.

Behavior Education Plan – Draft:

The Behavior Education Plan (BEP), MMSD’s policy for addressing behavior and discipline, was approved by the Board of Education in the spring of 2014 with initial implementation in the fall of 2014. The BEP moves us toward the use proactive approaches that focus on building student and staff skills and competencies, which, in turn, lead to greater productivity and success. Moreover, the BEP is also designed to reflect a commitment to student equity as we hold all students to high expectations while providing different supports to meet those expectations. Ultimately, the BEP seeks to decrease the use of exclusionary practices through the use of progressive, restorative discipline while also impacting the significant disproportionality experienced, in particular, by our African American students, male students, and / or students with disabilities.

Given the complexity of implementing the many layers of the BEP, ongoing implementation of the BEP continues to require differentiated and stable supports for our schools including allocation of resources targeted to the needs of students. BEP focus areas for 2016-2017 include implementation of Positive Behavior Support (PBS) universal school-wide systems, PBS classroom systems and practices, behavior response, and tier 2 and 3 interventions.

Priority Actions for Board Consideration (Draft – February 2016):

Pathways Professional Development – In order to support the planning and implementation of personalized pathways in year one, the District will provide professional development to support the first health services pathway.

$400,000 Grant Total (Grant Funding for Professional Development – pending)

$200,000 -(Direct Grant to support local Professional Development)

$200,000 – (In-Kind Grant for Professional Development)

Major Capital Maintenance- The capital maintenance budget is currently funded at $4.5 million, well below the $8.0 million target level recommended in the latest (2012) facility study.

$500,000 – Provides incremental progress towards annual funding goal of $8,000,000 to maintain our schools. (Funding from Local) – Questions have been raised about past maintenance and referendum spending (editor)

Priority spreadsheet that requires new funding.

Measuring Strategic Framework Goal #3:

Goal 3 of MMSD’s Strategic Framework is that “Every student, family and employee experiences a customer service oriented school system as measured by school climate survey data.” The district’s Climate Survey, first administered in the spring of 2015, provides the data we need to measure progress on this goal. In this document, we introduce our recommendations for using climate survey data to set goals and track progress at the district (Strategic Framework via the Annual Report) and school (SIP) level.

Our recommendations are designed to answer five questions:

1. How should we account for different surveyed groups?
2. What metric(s) should we use?
3. Which dimensions should we include?
4. How should schools set goals?
5. Should schools goal set on focus groups?

Personalized Pathways- Draft

Introduction
Personalized Pathways- Draft 2016-2017
The development of Personalized Pathways is a major strategic priority action for 2016-17. The goal next year is to prepare for and establish the right conditions for a successful launch of Personalized Pathways in the fall of 2017 that will improve the level of engagement for our students, the number of students on track for graduation and our graduation rates. In alignment with state legislation, the continued development and expansion of Academic and Career Plans (ACP) undergirds the development of Personalized Pathways by ensuring that every student graduates with a clear post-secondary plan that has been developed throughout their secondary school experience. The key actions for 2016-17 are outlined below and are essential to improving the readiness levels of our schools and central office staff.

Personnel
Next year, the expansion of ACP to 7th and 10th grade will require a small increase of 1.9 FTE at middle school and 1.5 FTE at high school (total 3.4 FTE) to support these new work streams.

With the continued expansion of ACP to grades 6 through 12 over three years, staffing will need to increase across our middle schools to 3.8 FTE where it will level off for full implementation. ACP expansion at high schools will also need to expand over the next three years to support the number of students needing experiential learning related to college and career exploration, as well as Pathways coordination, leveling off at 6.8 FTE. The funding strategy may include repurposing existing roles or grant opportunities.

Indeed, spending more than $500,000,000 annually for 27K students provides “plenty of resources”.

“The thing about Madison that’s kind of exciting is there’s plenty of work to do and plenty of resources with which to do it,” Mitchell said. “It’s kind of a sweet spot for Jen. Whether she stays will depend on how committed the district is to continuing the work she does. plenty of resources”, Derek Mitchell, 2013.

Tap for a larger version.

Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email:

LETRS Training
For the fourth year, the Milwaukee Summer Reading Project will offer free training in Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) in Milwaukee. Ten Saturday classes run from March into June. There are approximately ten open spots, with registration being first come-first served. If you are interested, please reply to this email to receive detailed information.

The Badger Exam
For 2014-15, the Badger Exam was Wisconsin’s annual statewide test in English Language Arts, taking the place of the WKCE. Badger was the name used in Wisconsin for the assessment developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), one of two Common Core-aligned assessments utilized by multiple states.

As was the case in other states that used this SBAC assessment, a much higher percentage of fourth grade students reached the proficient level than on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). See https://edreformnow.org/how-do-new-naep-scores-compare-with-smarter-balanced-and-parcc/ In Wisconsin, 50.4% of fourth graders were proficient on the Badger, while only 37% were proficient on the NAEP. This discrepancy could be attributed to differing exam content as well as different standards for setting proficiency cut scores. (Wisconsin was not included in the above-linked article because DPI delayed release of Badger results from the spring, 2015 exam until January 13, 2016.)

As is true in the NAEP data, the Badger scores reflect deep and persistent gaps between different groups of students. Proficiency percentages were only 20.2 for African-American fourth graders, 24.3 for students with disabilities, and 37.1 for low income students. DPI’s press release contains details.

At this point, Wisconsin’s DPI has not posted district and school Badger results on its website, which limits public access to this important information. An article in the Wisconsin State Journal provides information on districts in Dane County. In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Alan Borsuk reports that Milwaukee proficiency percentages were so low that former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called it a “national disgrace.”

The Badger exam is now history in Wisconsin. Legislation required development of the new Forward exam for this year. Since we will not longer be able to compare scores with other states who are taking the SBAC exam, it is critical that Wisconsin be honest about setting its proficiency cut scores at a level that corresponds to the NAEP standards.

2015 data via a .xlsx, .numbers file or PDF. Milwaukee School District Slides (PDF).

Wisconsin’s long serving WKCE exam was oft criticized for very low standards.

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending more the $17,000 per student annually.

Tap for a larger version.

Madison Teachers, Inc. PDF Newsletter

On his pending retirement, Matthews said, “I never thought this day would arrive, but I provide this notice knowing we have accomplished so much for MTI members, that while I leave with a heavy heart it is one filled with great satisfaction.” He added that he would remain available to MTI whenever his advice or assistance is needed; that he will continue to help individuals however he can; and that he will continue to be active in social justice.

January 4, 2016 Newsletter and January 19, 2016

Madison School District Administration (PDF):

Some of the ways in which MMSD has invested in people include:

Increased the number of PK-12 staff from 3,497 in 2008-09 to 4,027 in 2013-14. This effectively grew the district’s total employees by 15% over 5 years (largely due to 4K implementation during this time), while maintaining a student to all staff ratio of 6.7.

Covered 100% of the cost of employees’ benefits (90% for administrators) for employees working at least 19.5 hours per week. On average, benefits cost $21,188 per teacher and $12,927 per employee annually.

Increased the starting salary 2% per year, resulting in starting pay shifting to $36,108 in 2013-14 from $32,913 in 2008-09 – effectively, a 10% increase in starting salary for teachers over a 5-year period.

Madison has the lowest student to licensed staff ratio among the five largest Wisconsin school districts.

Compensation is, by far, MMSD’s largest expense, representing 85% of all costs

Emerging Opportunities
Starting and average salaries for teachers are:
Low relative to other industries in Madison
Near the middle of local and regional districts
Low compared to urban school districts, which presents a challenge for recruitment

It takes longer (compared to other districts and industries) to reach maximum salaries

A large portion of a teacher’s lifetime earnings are earned near the end of a teacher’s career

MMSD spent $7.6M in 2013-2014 on stipends and additive wages (e.g., teachers taking on extra duties both during school year and summer)

Salary schedules for different roles overlap

There is no cap on the number of steps

There are limited financial incentives to pursue leadership roles

MMSD does not offer financial incentives to work in hard-to-staff subjects or schools but has sole discretion on initial placement on the salary schedule

A focus on years of service and educational attainment misses key opportunities to promote equity, student engagement, employee engagement and employee retention

Some Districts have thought and operated differently regarding teacher opportunities and compensation. Oconomowoc is one example.

Patrick Marley:

The union Madison Teachers Inc. on Nov. 10 sought documents under the open records law that would show who had voted so far in the election that ran from Nov. 4 to Nov. 24.

On June 16, the commission’s chairman, James Scott, denied the request, saying the ballots were in the hands of a contractor who runs the elections for the commission and arguing the interests of “avoiding the potential for voter coercion while balloting is ongoing outweigh the interests favoring disclosure.” Scott also contended releasing the records would undermine the secrecy of the ballot because non-votes are considered “no” votes.

Doug Erickson follows up.

Much more on Madison Teachers, Inc. and Act 10, here.

Meanwhile, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Doug Erickson:

Of the 2,838 Madison School District teachers eligible to vote, 86 percent cast a ballot to recertify the Madison Teachers Inc. union, according to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, the state agency responsible for administering collective bargaining laws. The 20-day voting period ended at noon Tuesday.

Much more on Madison Teachers, Inc. and Act 10, here.

Caroline Bermudez:

In a city with the greatest economic inequity in the country and with a rapidly expanding charter school now serving nearly half of the city’s students, D.C. is one of the few traditional public school districts in the country with enrollment gains and is on track to exceed 50,000 students by 2017. Much of the credit goes to Henderson’s leadership.

STRONG LEADERSHIP
Henderson’s relentless energy and boundless public praise in support of her teachers and principals has created positive morale and considerable buy-in among classroom educators to what is one of the most ambitious reform agendas in the country.

She has also maintained labor peace even while driving an aggressive teacher quality agenda that links evaluation and compensation in part to student growth, something few other urban superintendents can claim.

Madison rejected a proposed IB charter school several years ago.

“An emphasis on adult employment“.

Madison Teacher’s, Inc. (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email.

Last week’s MTI Solidarity! contained an article about a teacher strike in Seattle. Among the issues were wages not keeping up with inflation, “no state increase in funding for health care,” providing teachers with a greater voice regarding standardized tests, management’s proposal for a longer workday without additional compensation, and other quality of education issues.
As more details become available, the Union’s victories are obvious, including a 14.3% wage increase over three years (which includes a 4.8% cost-of-living adjustment paid by the State over two years). What a contrast to Wisconsin. The State of Washington will contribute to wages via a cost-of-living increase and contribute toward the cost of employees’ health insurance.

Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant criticized the legislature and its lack of support for education. She said, “The educators’ demands are completely reasonable….For too long the legislature has ignored the needs of the children and bent over backwards to give corporations handout after handout. Boeing executives got a special session. Where is the special session for education? Teachers are faced with stagnating salaries, overcrowded classrooms, too many standardized tests, and inadequate resources. It’s high time the legislature did their job, stop ignoring the mandate by voters to lower class sizes and raise teachers’ pay. Fully fund education now!” We need more legislators like Sawant in Wisconsi

Valerie Strauss:

Striking Seattle School District teachers and other educators walk a picket line Sept. 10 near Franklin High School in Seattle. (Ted S. Warren/AP)

Seattle teachers went on strike for a week this month with a list of goals for a new contract. By the time the strike officially ended this week, teachers had won some of the usual stuff of contract negotiations — for example, the first cost-of-living raises in six years — but also less standard objectives.

For one thing, teachers demanded, and won, guaranteed daily recess for all elementary school students — 30 minutes each day. In an era when recess for many students has become limited or non-existent despite the known benefits of physical activity, this is a big deal, and something parents had sought.

What’s more, the union and school officials agreed to create committees at 30 schools to look at equity issues, including disciplinary measures that disproportionately affect minorities. Several days after the end of the strike, the Seattle School Board voted for a one-year ban on out-of-school suspensions of elementary students who commit specific nonviolent offenses, and called for a plan that could eliminate all elementary school suspensions.

Related: Madison’s Schwerpunkt.

Mike Antonucci:

Now a case awaits hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court that could dramatically change this picture. The Far Left periodical In These Times calls Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association the case “that could decimate American public sector unionism.” Perhaps that’s simply an ideological overstatement. Nonetheless, the case, if decided for the plaintiffs, could end the practice of “agency” fees—money paid to the union by nonmembers in exchange for collective bargaining services. Unions call them “fair-share” fees and assert that their elimination would create a class of free riders, workers who would pay nothing while still enjoying the higher salaries and other benefits negotiated by unions.

The stakes for teachers unions are high, as a 2011 Wisconsin law illustrates. Wisconsin Act 10, known as the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill, eliminated agency fees there and reshaped the collective bargaining process. Since the law’s passage, membership in the Wisconsin Education Association Council and the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin has fallen by more than 50 percent, according to a 2015 report from the National Education Association (NEA). In 2014, NEA membership in agency fee states grew by 5,300. In states without agency fees, it fell by more than 47,000.

Accordingly, at a conference of the California Teachers Association (CTA), the union briefed its activists on the potential consequences should the unions lose in Friedrichs, citing loss of revenue; fewer resources; decline in membership; reduced staffing; increased pressure on the CTA pension and benefit system; and potential financial crises for some locals.

Related: Act 10 and Madison’s Schwerpunkt.

Mike Antonucci:

Teachers should teach, and should be in charge of instructing and evaluating teachers. Principals should run schools and administer the operations therein. These should not be controversial notions, but decades of inertia and turf wars gave us the system we have now.

In Delaware, at least they are talking about shaking up that system, and the Delaware State Education Association is supporting those efforts. I am pessimistic about its chances of becoming a nationwide trend, but every little bit helps, and the union deserves credit for moving in this direction. This article has the details , and this video explains the reasons .

Meanwhile, in Madison.

Wisconsin’s stürm and drang over “Act 10” is somewhat manifested in Madison. Madison’s government schools are the only Wisconsin District, via extensive litigation, to still have a collective bargaining agreement with a teacher union, in this case, Madison Teachers, Inc.

The Madison School Board and Administration are working with the local teachers union on a new “Handbook”. The handbook will replace the collective bargaining agreement. Maneuvering over the terms of this very large document illuminates posturing and power structure(s) in our local government schools.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham wrote recently (September 17, 2015 PDF):

The Oversight group was able to come to agreement on all of the handbook language with the exception of one item, job transfer in the support units. Pursuant to the handbook development process, this item was presented to me for review and recommendation to the Board. My preliminary recommendation is as follows:

Job Transfer for all support units
(See Pages 151, 181, 197, 240, 261)

Superintendent Recommendation
That the language in the Handbook with regard to transfer state as follows: Vacancies shall first be filled by employees in surplus. The District has the right to determine and select the most qualified applicant for any position. The term applicant refers to both internal and external candidates for the position.

The District retains the right to determine the job qualifications needed for any vacant position. Minimum qualifications shall be established by the District and equally applied to all persons.

Rationale/Employee Concern

Rationale:
It is essential that the District has the ability to hire the most qualified candidate for any vacant position—whether an internal candidate or an external candidate. This language is currently used for transfers in the teacher unit. Thus, it creates consistency across employee groups.
By providing the District with the flexibility of considering both internal and external candidates simultaneously the District can ensure that it is hiring the most qualified individual for any vacant position. It also gives the District opportunities to diversify the workforce by expanding the pool of applicants under consideration. This change would come with a commitment to provide stronger development opportunities for internal candidates who seek pathways to promotion.

Employee Concern:
The existing promotional system already grants a high degree of latitude in selecting candidates, including hiring from the outside where there are not qualified or interested internal applicants. It also helps to develop a cadre of dedicated, career-focused employees.

September 24, 2015 Memo to the Madison government schools board of education from Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham:

To: Board of Education
From: Jennifer Cheatham, Superintendent of Schools
RE: Update to Handbook following Operations Work Group

The Operations Work Group met on Monday September 21, 2015. Members of the Oversight Group for development of the Employee Handbook presented the draft Employee Handbook to the Board. There was one item on which the Oversight Group was unable to reach agreement, the hiring process for the support units. Pursuant to the handbook development process, this item was presented to me for review and recommendation to the Board. There was discussion around this item during the meeting and, the Board requested that members of the Oversight Group meet again in an attempt to reach consensus.

Per the Board’s direction, District and employee representatives on the Oversight Group came together to work on coming to consensus on the one remaining item in the Handbook. The group had a productive dialog and concluded that with more time, the group would be able to work together to resolve this issue. Given that the Handbook does not go into effect until July1, 2016, the group agreed to leave the issue regarding the hiring process for the support units unresolved at this point and to include in the Handbook the phrase “To Be Determined” in the applicable sections. As such, there is no longer an open item. When you vote on the Handbook on Monday, the section on the “Selection Process” in the various addenda for the applicable support units will state “To Be Determined” with an agreement on the part of the Oversight Group to continue to meet and develop final language that the Board will approve before the Handbook takes effect in the 2016-17 school year.

Current Collective Bargaining Agreement (160 page PDF) Wordcloud:

Proposed Employee Handbook (304 Page PDF – 9.21.2015 slide presentation) Wordcloud:

Background:

1. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has filed suit to vacate the Madison government schools collective bargaining agreement with Madison Teachers, Inc.

2. Attorney Lester Pines has spent considerable time litigating Act 10 on behalf of Madison Teachers, Inc. – with some success.

3. The collective bargaining agreement has been used to prevent the development of non-Madison Government school models, such as independent charter, virtual and voucher organizations. This one size fits all approach was manifested by the rejection [Kaleem Caire letter] of the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.

4. Yet, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending more than $15,000 per student annually. See also “What’s different, this time?”

5. Comparing Madison, Long Beach and Boston government school teacher union contracts. Current Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham has cited Boston and Long Beach government schools as Districts that have narrowed the achievement gap. Both government districts offer a variety of school governance models, which is quite different than Madison’s long-time “one size fits all approach”.

6. Nearby Oconomowoc is paying fewer teachers more.

7. Minneapolis teacher union approved to authorize charter schools.

8. Madison Teachers, Inc. commentary on the proposed handbook (Notes and links). Wordcloud:

9. A rather astonishing quote:

“The notion that parents inherently know what school is best for their kids is an example of conservative magical thinking.”; “For whatever reason, parents as a group tend to undervalue the benefits of diversity in the public schools….”

– Madison School Board member Ed Hughes.

10. 1,570,000 for four senators – WEAC.

11. Then Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club:

“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.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Schwerpunkt via wikipedia.

Thomas Arnett:

Fortunately, the tides in education policy are finally pushing the system to realize the importance of its teachers. Test-based accountability is forcing districts to look past their myopic focus on enrollments, course offerings, and graduation rates and to take students’ academic performance more seriously. And because modern research has shown that teachers are the most important school-level factor influencing student achievement, many of today’s most prominent reform efforts focus on ensuring there is an effective, expert teacher in every classroom.
If schools and districts intend to fulfill the mandate to boost student achievement, they will need to adopt new strategies that place paramount emphasis on recruiting and retaining the best teachers. This shift in district strategy should then put individual teachers in a position to negotiate their salaries and working conditions based on the value their individual expertise brings to their schools.
But unfortunately, even in this era of increased accountability, many districts still operate as if teachers are commodities. Instead of recruiting strategically from the best teacher preparation programs in the country, they take the teachers that the nearest regional state school has to offer. Instead of putting together competitive and attractive salary and benefit packages and then working in the early spring to attract the best teachers to their schools, they wait until just before the start of the school year to frantically fill their open teaching slots. Instead of giving principals control over staffing so that they can build great faculty teams across multiple years, they move teachers around capriciously from one year to the next—and sometimes during the middle of the school year—and prioritize allocation targets over effectiveness. Instead of working with individual teachers to find roles where their particular areas of expertise are most relevant, districts often shift teachers at the last minute to grade levels or subject areas that are technically within their certification but realistically outside the domains where those teachers are most experienced, passionate, and able to excel.

Related: a focus on adult employment.

Jennifer Reuf:

So unions protect the working conditions of teachers, which protects the learning environments for children. If you want decent learning conditions for students, protect decent working conditions for their teachers. It is no coincidence that there is a record shortage of teachers to staff Wisconsin’s famously excellent public schools this year.

A colleague once told me she really appreciated university students who hailed from Wisconsin public schools because they can think critically. The tide is turning, and informed Wisconsin citizens need to make sure it does not sweep Wisconsin children out to sea. Please examine the evidence. It is not too late. It is time to empower teachers by empowering unions.

Joseph O’Sullivan & Katherine Long.

The budget gives a 3 percent cost-of-living raise to K-12 employees over the next two years, plus an additional temporary 1.8 percent increase that expires in 2017. It proposes a slight increase in health-care benefits for K-12 employees, but not enough, the Washington Education Association said, to keep up with rising costs.

Ordway said he expects lawmakers to suspend Initiative 1351. Still, he called the budget “one of the best education budgets in the history of the state.”

Rich Wood, spokesman for the Washington Education Association, said the one-time 1.8 percent pay increase does little to make up for the six years that the state did not pay teachers regular cost-of-living adjustments. Besides a 3 percent cost-of-living increase over the next two years, he said, there is no increase in base pay for teachers.

“People are already joking, and saying, ‘It’s like a tip,’ ” he said.

Seattle’s 2015-2016 $753,100,000 budget [PDF] for 51,175 students and 6,072 staff.

Much more on Madison’s 2015-2016 budget, here.

Chris Rickert:

In other words, it’s wrong for a school board member to vote specifically on policy affecting his finances, but OK to vote on a budget including that very same policy.

There are probably people in other parts of Wisconsin who would object to a local school board that gives itself big, immediate raises and to a school board member who votes on a budget that continues to excuse him from doing something the majority of workers already do — help pay for their health insurance.

But this is Madison, and as long as the board keeps its politics liberal and its teachers union happy, it’s doing a pretty good job.

Related: School Board member Ed Hughes (2005):

This points up one of the frustrating aspects of trying to follow school issues in Madison: the recurring feeling that a quoted speaker – and it can be someone from the administration, or MTI, or the occasional school board member – believes that the audience for an assertion is composed entirely of idiots.

Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.

Pat Schneider:

“I will consider contributions to health care, depending on what we see in terms of costs and the budget,” Burke said. “But we need to look at compensation in its entirety to make sure we remain competitive while we are accountable to the taxpayers.”

The school district is in the process of preparing to hire a consultant to conduct a study of employee compensation, she said.

Representatives of Madison Teachers Inc. say the fully paid health care premiums are a benefit bought with concessions on salary increases over the years.

That’s exactly why it’s so important to look at the district’s compensation as a whole, Burke said.

“We want to make sure the school district is a place that can attract quality people. That’s why the survey will not only compare us to other school districts, but also to other professions,” she said.

The Madison Metropolitan School District’s three major health insurance providers — Group Health Cooperative, Dean Health Plan and Unity Health Insurance — each agreed to hold the line on premiums next year. That helped the school district hold the line on a major expense — more than $61 million annually — in a budget round that saw operating expenses up nearly 11 percent as state aid dropped.

Madison’s 2015-2016 budget and its long term disastrous reading results, here. Note that Madison has long spent more than double the national average per student.

Mitch Henck:

Gee, Kaleem Caire and other black community leaders fought for Madison Prep. It was a proposed charter school aimed at serving young males, mostly black and Hispanic, to be taught predominantly by teachers of color for more effective role modeling.

Berg and several white conservatives in Madison, along with moderate John Roach, supported Madison Prep. It was voted down by white progressives, 5-2.

In 1983, white progressives voted for the Midvale/Lincoln and Randall/Franklin pairing plan 4-3. Berg joined conservative Nancy Harper and board president Salter in opposing the busing plan.

Gee says poor performance and bad behavior can be related to children of color feeling lost in an unfamiliar environment. That can lead to children “working” the teachers or pushing the envelope more than what would happen if teachers of color and similar culture could relate to parents and command more respect in class.

As reported in this paper last Sunday, Gee spoke to Madison School Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham and other school officials about his ideas to close the achievement gap. “They didn’t run out of the room,” Gee said.

It’s not clear if Madison’s education establishment will budge on Gee’s ideas, which include recruiting more parent leaders and working with employers to train young entrepreneurs.

Richard Adams:

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds or with special needs may be marked down in critical primary school assessments because of unconscious bias affecting their teachers, according to research published on Tuesday.

The research also suggests familiar gender stereotypes – that boys are good at maths and girls are better at reading – may create a vicious cycle, and that this may “continue to play a part in creating and perpetuating inequalities”.

The work by University College London’s Institute of Education compared results from standardised tests by nearly 5,000 primary school pupils in England with assessments of their ability by their teachers. It found significant differences in how the pupils performed compared with their teachers’ judgment.

Related. Tyranny of low expectations.

Poverty & Education Forum (2005):

Rafael Gomez organized an excellent Forum Wednesday evening on Poverty and Education. Participants include:

Tom Kaplan: Associate Director of the Institute for Research on Poverty kaplan at ssc.wisc.edu

Ray Allen, Former Madison Board of Education Member, Publisher – Madison Times

Maria Covarrubias: A Teacher at Chavez Elementary mcovarrubias at madison.k12.wi.us

Mary Kay Baum: Executive Director; Madison-Area Urban Ministry mkb at emum.org

Bob Howard: Madison School District rhoward at madison.k12.wi.us

Possible de-regulation of Wisconsin charter school authorizations has lead to a bit of rhetoric on the state of Madison’s schools, their ability to compete and whether the District’s long term, disastrous reading results are being addressed. We begin with Chris Rickert:

Madison school officials not eager to cede control of ‘progress’:

Still, Department of Public Instruction student achievement data suggest independent charter schools overseen by UW-Milwaukee since 1999 provide better educations than Milwaukee public schools.

And if the UW System gets the authority to create a new office for approving charter schools in Madison, it wouldn’t be the first time a local or state government function was usurped by unelected and allegedly unaccountable people at higher levels of government who are aiming to eliminate injustice. U.S. presidents sent federal authorities to the South during the civil rights era. Appointed state and federal judges have been asked to overturn local and state abortion-related ordinances and laws. Last year, a federal judge struck down Wisconsin’s voter-approved gay marriage ban.

The injustice in the Madison School District is, of course, its decades-long failure to close achievement gaps between white students and students of color and between middle class and poor students.

Cheatham told this newspaper that “we are making progress on behalf of all children.”

Apparently, the district feels it should be the only educational organization in Madison with the opportunity to make such progress.

That’s because control over education might be as high a priority for the district as improving education.

David Blaska:

It is a worthy debate, for there is little doubt that the full school board, its superintendent, its teachers union, the Democratic Party, Mayor Soglin, and probably the majority of Madisonians share Ed’s sentiments. For the festive rest of us, the white lab coats at the Blaska Policy Research Werkes have developed an alternative Top Ten, dedicated to the late Larry “Bud” Melman.

1) Attack the motives of your adversaries. “What’s tougher is buying into [the] interpretation that the Joint Finance Committee Republicans are the good guys here, struggling mightily to do what’s right for our kids,” Ed Hughes says. “My much different interpretation is that the Joint Finance proposal is simply another cynical attack on our neighborhood public schools and is motivated both by animus for Madison and by an unseemly obsession with privatizing public education, particularly in the urban areas of our state.”

Unseemly! Particularly in urban Milwaukee, where the public school district as a whole has received a failing grade from the Department of Public Instruction, and in Madison, with a yawning chasm between black and white student achievement.

2) Nobody asked our permission. Ed complains that nobody consulted MMSD about its “strategies for enhancing student achievement, promising practices, charter school philosophy, or anything else.” Um, sometimes results speak louder than pretty words on paper, Ed.

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

So we have two contrasting interpretations of the proposal. As it happens, I am right and Rickert is wrong. To help Rickert see the error of his ways, here’s a Letterman-like list of the top ten reasons why the Joint Finance proposal to establish a so-called “Office of Educational Opportunity” within the office of the UW System President is a cynical ploy to stuff Madison with charter schools for the sake of having more charter schools rather than a noble effort to combat injustice:

Mr. Hughes, in 2005:

This points up one of the frustrating aspects of trying to follow school issues in Madison: the recurring feeling that a quoted speaker – and it can be someone from the administration, or MTI, or the occasional school board member – believes that the audience for an assertion is composed entirely of idiots.

Finally, then Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman, in 2009:

Zimman’s talk ranged far and wide. He discussed Wisconsin’s K-12 funding formula (it is important to remember that school spending increases annually (from 1987 to 2005, spending grew by 5.10% annually in Wisconsin and 5.25% in the Madison School District), though perhaps not in areas some would prefer.

“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.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

David Wahlberg:

Madison Teachers Inc. and five other Madison-based unions are so concerned about significant financial losses at Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin, they’re urging members to vote for particular candidates in Group Health’s board election Thursday.

“MTI cannot stand idly by and watch GHC disappear,” John Matthews, the teacher union’s executive director, wrote in a letter last month to members.

Group Health lost $18.7 million last year after losing $15.7 million in 2013 and $5.5 million in 2012, according to financial statements filed with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Kevin Hayden, Group Health’s CEO, is on leave for reasons the HMO won’t explain.

Group Health made $364,000 the first quarter of this year and expects a “substantial improvement over 2014,” a statement by board president Ken Machtan said.

The losses were covered by “substantial reserves so no debt was accumulated,” Machtan said. Group Health “continues to maintain a healthy reserve,” he said.

Details.

Healthcare costs have long been a significant issue in the Madison School District’s budget.

Pat Schneider:

“Usually the first quarter is a honeymoon period when students are excited to be in school and behaviors are good. So when things were already deteriorating rapidly, it was a sign to me that this was not going in a good direction,” said Bush, 50, who has taught at Jefferson Middle School on Madison’s west side her whole career.

It wasn’t a specific incident, but the piling on of several serious incidents so early in the school year that troubled her.

“I’m seeing behaviors on a regular basis that I haven’t seen in 20 years of teaching,” Bush said. Some of this alarming conduct included students swearing at teachers, kicking trash cans, walking out of class, and kids wandering the hallways and in and out of classrooms, she said.

The behavior policy, implemented at the start of this school year, requires teachers to ask for outside help if they can’t control a misbehaving student. But Bush says such calls for help often go unanswered by overwhelmed support staff, who are supposed to walk an out-of-control student out of the classroom and “intervene” to get a sense of the causes of the misbehavior.

Related:

Madison’s disastrous long term reading results.

Deja vu: 2005: Gangs and school violence audio/video. More, here.

Police calls: 1996-2006.

Commentary from David Blaska

Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Work continues on the creation of an Employee Handbook to take effect once the Collective Bargaining Agreements expire in June, 2016. MTI-represented employees continue to be covered by Collective Bargaining Agreements through June 30, 2016. The Board of Education has approved a process for the development of the Employee Handbook which includes a joint Oversight Group composed of five (5) appointees by MTI, two (2) by AFSCME, one (1) by the Building Trades Council, three (3) building principals and up to five (5) other administrators. It was agreed in negotiations for the 2015-16 Contracts that the Collective Bargaining Agreements will serve as the foundation of the Handbook.

Notes and charts from the Districts’ most recent 2015-2016 budget document (5MB PDF):

Our 25,364 students are served by 4,076 Teachers & Staff (6.22 students per District employee).

Salaries and Wages
For 2015-16, MMSD has collective bargaining agreements in place with its represented employee groups, including teachers, aides, clerical, and custodial staff. The teachers’ collective bargaining agreement is based on a traditional salary schedule, including compensation components for additional years of service (step movement) and additional professional development (lane movement). In addition,

the Board approved an increase of 0.25% per cell for all teachers (cell increase). Together, the additional compensation for step movement and cell increases provides an average increase of 1.75% to employees, plus a reserve for lane changes of $400,000, for a combined budgetary impact of $4.5 million on district salaries. This budget proposal includes funding for these wage and salary commitments. MMSD’s other employee groups will experience similar increases in compensation.
Health Insurance

MMSD offers an attractive employee benefits plan to its employees. The district spends over $61 million per year on health insurance premiums, which is approximately 15% of the total district budget. Each year, the risk of rising health care costs creates significant budget uncertainty for the district: each one percent increase in health insurance rates costs MMSD about $610,000. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act brings additional fees and responsibilities for employers, including the requirement to offer affordable and valuable coverage to all employees who work 30 or more hours per week, starting July 1, 2015. Although the exact impact of this requirement is not yet known, MMSD could be required to provide coverage to approximately 120 employees not currently eligible for health insurance benefits.
The district contracts for health insurance with three Madison area HMOs. Group Health Cooperative (GHC) has covers approximately 60% of MMSD employees, while Dean and Unity each cover approximately 20%. Negotiations are continuing for July 1, 2015 rate renewals. The district, in collaboration with employee representatives, are working to minimize the budget impact for 2015-16. An update on the current status of health insurance rate renewals will be presented to the Board in May.

This year, MMSD launched its employee wellness program, which was developed with the input of the employee unions. A team representing a broad spectrum of employees has been selected to design the program activities and support district wellness. In addition, employees are asked to sign up for biometric screenings and health risk assessments, which will provide information that can be used to develop programs that meet the needs of MMSD employees and help curb long-term health care cost increases.

Mitch Henck Comments on Madison’s Spending and Tax Practices:

David Blaska

Voters just approved a $41 million spending referendum. Now the Madison Metro School District says it needs to cut $10.8 million to cover a deficit. This is after rewarding its unionized teachers and support staff with a 2.5% pay increase in the budget approved late last year.

Who is running this store? Hint: It ain’t the Koch Brothers.

The cuts will require eliminating 110 positions, mostly teachers. How does this help minority achievement?

The school board rushed to ratify union contracts four years ago while protesters were still camping overnight in the State Capitol. The district scheduled a special meeting on a Saturday morning with only the minimally required public notice. I attended that meeting, but the public — the three of us who found the meeting — were not allowed to speak. The contract required no teacher contribution to their generous health insurance coverage.

School districts that took advantage of Act 10 are not laying off teachers.

Madison is paying for this folly by collecting teachers union boss John Matthews’ dues for him. Some of that money finds its way back to finance the school board members’ election campaigns. Sweet deal for the union, wormy apples for the students and their families, self-tapping screws for the taxpayers.

I continue to find it fascinating that Madison plans to expand two of its least diverse schools: Hamilton and Van Hise, despite capacity elsewhere and the District’s long term disastrous reading results.

Madison Teachers, Inc Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Attention is called to two significant changes regarding the transfer process for members of MTI’s teacher bargaining unit. While surplus can be declared up to July 1, this year the District acted early. Thus, reassignment from surplus is expected to be substantially completed before May 1. After that date, vacancies will be posted for internal transfer through July 15. New this year is a modification enabled by Governor Walker’s Act 10, i.e. all applicants for a vacant position will be considered equally, whether the applicant is internal or a new hire.

Positions will be filled on the basis of qualifications as determined by the District. Given that internal and external applicants will be considered at the same time, the District will require internal applicants to complete a pre- screening application in order to be considered for transfer. One must complete an online form and participate in a phone interview with a Human Resources Analyst before he/she can be referred to an interview for a specific vacancy. The pre-screening application only needs to be completed once per school year for any subsequent transfer opportunity.

The pre-screening process is focused on a set of eight “competencies” that have been developed by the District. Information about this process, including the list of “competencies,” has been sent to all members of MTI’s teacher bargaining unit and can be found on the MMSD website: https://hr.madison.k12.wi.us/files/hr/TEACHM adison.pdf.

April 7, 2015 newsletter (PDF).

Chris Rickert:

A reader with a much keener sense of irony than I emailed this week to point out that the site identified 3 1/2 years ago for the aborted Madison Preparatory Academy is slated to become home to a new police station by 2017.

That’s right. In a city with some of the highest rates of black incarceration in the country, a police station is taking the place of a school aimed at improving the prospects of poor, minority students.

The Madison Prep charter school was the brainchild of the Urban League of Greater Madison and its then-CEO, Kaleem Caire, and was to occupy the former Mount Olive Lutheran Church building at 4018 Mineral Point Road.

Madison Prep would have featured single-sex classrooms, longer school days, required parental involvement and other strategies not usually seen in a Madison public schools system that has struggled to educate black children.

In December 2011, it was voted down by a majority white, uniformly liberal school board over concerns about its cost, accountability to taxpayers, and use of nonunion employees. Madison’s overwhelmingly white teachers union opposed the school.

Now, Madison appears to be moving ahead with a plan to demolish the church and an adjoining house and replace them with a $9 million police station that will increase the number of stations from five to six and, police said, relieve pressure on officers serving the populous West Side.

Much more on the rejected Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email:

As a result of a joint MTI-MMSD committee on parent- teacher conferences, several changes were agreed upon. For the first time, teachers participating in evening parent-teacher conferences were provided a compensatory day off, which occurred last November 26. In exchange for the comp day, teachers must have conferences on two (2) evenings. For elementary teachers, the fall conferences occurred on November 19. The spring conference will occur on March 19. Conferences are in lieu of report cards, and staff are not required to do additional record-keeping beyond normal data collection and logging parent attendance at conferences. Conferences are recommended to be 15 minutes.

The joint MTI/MMSD committee agreed that the best use of time is to distribute any forms and information at other times and through other means, so teachers can spend all conference time reviewing student progress. The joint committee also agreed that conferences may occur at other than the scheduled times, if agreed between the parent and teacher.

Pursuant to Section V-M of the MTI/MMSD Collective Bargaining Agreement, in recognition of 4K, non-Sage 2nd grade, non-Sage 3rd grade, 4th grade and 5th grade teachers having more parent-teacher conferences due to increased class size shall be excused from the early release SIP-aligned activities on Mondays during the month of November and March.

Complete language regarding parent-teacher conferences can be found on MTI’s website (www.madisonteachers.org). Teachers who have further questions can call or email Eve Degen (degene@madisonteachers.org) at MTI headquarters.

Mitch Henck:

This is Madison. I learned that phrase when I moved here from Green Bay in 1992.
It means that the elites who drive the politics and the predominate culture are more liberal or “progressive” than backward places out state.

I knew I was in Madison as a reporter when parents and activists were fighting over whether to have “Sarah Has Two Mommies” posters in a grade school library. Concerned parents weakly stated at a public hearing that first-graders were too young to understand sexuality of any kind.

Activists at the public meeting said the children needed to understand tolerance. One conservative parent said: “Why don’t we vote by secret ballot?” An activist said, “No, we want a consensus.”

The Madison School District official who was presiding agreed, and the controversial posters stayed on the library walls. This is Madison.

Now we have the Madison School Board. It has been historically run by the teacher’s union. The same was true after Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 was passed, strictly limiting collective bargaining for public employees.

Three weeks before the state Supreme Court would rule on the constitutionality of the law, the union-owned School Board rushed through a teacher’s contract that largely ignored Act 10. Unlike any other school district in the state, the contract made sure Madison teachers were not required to share the cost of their health insurance premiums. Unlike any other school district, Madison collects union dues from teacher paychecks for its leader, John Matthews.

By the way, I would not want him in a dark alley with me.

The problem is the Madison School District has a projected budget shortfall for 2015-2016 of $12 million to $20 million, according to last week’s State Journal. About $6 million could be saved by making aggressive health care costs, including requiring staff to contribute toward insurance premiums, renegotiating contracts with health care providers, and making plan changes. That’s according to Michael Barry, assistant superintendent of business services.

In fact, the district spends about $62 million on employee health care costs, which are expected to grow by 8.5 percent next school year. Shockingly, Madison School Board member Ed Hughes said: “If we’re talking about taking not a scalpel, but a machete to our programs given the cuts we’ll make because we’re the only school district in the state that’s unwilling to ask employees to contribute to their health insurance, I think that would be an impression that we would deservedly receive ridicule for.”

Even board member Mary Burke said: “We would be irresponsible to the community where basically 99 percent of the people pay contributions to health care” if the board made up the savings with cuts to staff and heath care.

So now what? The contract expires in June 2016. Conservative blogger David Blaska sued to force Madison to live under Act 10. A local judge ruled last week Blaska did have standing as a taxpayer to carry out his lawsuit as he is joined by The Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty.

Madison teacher’s union leader John Matthews said by making employees contribute to health care premiums, the district is effectively asking them to pay for iPads and administrators. Huh?

Todd Berry of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance told me 90 percent of state cuts to education were covered by savings offered to school districts under Act 10 by changing work rules, by employee contributions to retirement and health insurance premiums, and by altering health plans.

That might fly for the rest of the state, but then again, this is Madison.

Much more on benefits and the Madison School District and Act 10.

A focus on “adult employment“.

David Blaska:

Like the Sun Prairie groundhog, the Madison school district’s teachers contract has come back to bite the taxpayer. The Madison Metropolitan School District is looking at a $20.8 million budget deficit next school year.

Good Madison liberals worried about the state balancing its budget can now look closer to home.

To balance the budget, the district will most certainly have to raise taxes again; last year’s increase was a hefty 5.4%. It will probably cut programs. It may even lay off teachers. To ease the blow, will it ask those teachers to contribute to their excellent health coverage like 99% of the rest of the world?

This is the school district that thumbed its nose at Wisconsin law, the school district that eschewed using the flexibility given it by Wisconsin Act 10, the 2011 collective bargaining reform. Madison is the only district that collects union boss John Matthews’ dues for him, the only district that requires fair share payments, the only district that does not require its employees to contribute toward their very excellent health care insurance. A district that gave teachers longevity raises of 2% and 3% on top of free health insurance.

Much more, here.

Deirdre Hargrove-Krieghoff (PDF):

In continuing the work of developing a thriving workforce, we are in the process of redesigning our recruiting, screening and selection activities to support finding high quality, diverse candidates as early as possible and support improved hiring decisions at the school level.

The current board employment policy (#8005) covers employment and hiring of all employees and is very detailed. The redesigned teacher hiring process will include an approach that is competency-based, ensuring that principals will be provided a set of more qualified teacher candidates that better match the needs of their individual school.

We would like to move forward with implementation of all design activities and are recommending that the Board of Education waive the provisions of Board Policy 8005 (Employment) as applied to the application, screening, interviewing and hiring processes for principals and assistant principals, teachers and other professional staff for the 2015-2016 school year.

The following provides the recommended approach, which will be finalized in mid-February, we will take with the recruiting, screening and selection of said candidates:

Competencies Measured in Madison Teacher Screening Process. This looks like a noble list.

Tap to view larger versions.

Deirdre Hargrove-Krieghoff:

In support of the continued work of developing a thriving workforce, the HR team conducted a survey of the 10 largest districts in the State of Wisconsin as well as districts in Dane County to provide a picture of our current compensation standing. It is our intent to develop and maintain a competitive salary structure for all of our employees, and we are committed to creating a structure that attracts the highest performers and is equity based.

The following information was developed for a specific budget-related purpose – to help determine, on a macro level, where the district stands relative to comparables for principal and teacher salaries, and whether a significant budget allowance (additional funding) is needed in 2015-16 for the specific purpose of adjusting to market comparables.

Please note:
When reviewing the data for Principals and Assistant Principals, it is illustrating the range that a candidate could make entering the district. For the Teacher base it shows the starting range for a beginning teacher. Maximum salaries are not listed, as most districts that reported are in the process of restructuring their salary schedules for teachers.Approximately 80 out of the 320 of teachers hired annually actually come in at the base step of $37,263.

The data suggests that compared to other districts represented, MMSD is mid to low in salary placement for Assistant Principals and Teachers and mid to high for salary placement for Principals.

Some districts represented, have moved away from the traditional approach of funding salary steps and tracks within their schedules and are front loading their schedule to be more competitive, this shift may cause their ranges to be higher than MMSD.

Presumably, a real comparison might include total compensation and outcomes, not to mention qualification differences.

Notes and links:

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes, writing in 2005:

“This points up one of the frustrating aspects of trying to follow school issues in Madison: the recurring feeling that a quoted speaker – and it can be someone from the administration, or MTI, or the occasional school board member – believes that the audience for an assertion is composed entirely of idiots.”

Tap to view a larger version.

Comparing Madison and other District approaches to teacher benefits. Staffing compared: Madison, Long Beach & Boston.

A focus on adult employment.

Chris Rickert:

Teachers who reach goals in the new compensation plan can also move up the pay scale faster than they were able to move up the old salary schedule, Busler said, while those not interested in reaching goals can expect nothing more than annual cost-of-living salary increases.

But overall, the amount the district would put into teacher compensation is greater than the amount it would have had to put in under the old salary schedule, he said.

I was curious about why the district bothered to include seniority and degree-attainment in the new compensation plan at all, given that research has shown seniority isn’t correlated with more effective teaching beyond about five years on the job, and there’s little, if any, connection between getting more college credit and better teaching.

School Board member Charles Uphoff, who sat on the committee that created the new plan, said a main goal of the new plan is to pay the “profession of teaching more professionally.”

It’s nice to see someone in public education realizing teachers are not, say, interchangeable workers on an assembly line.

Meanwhile, back in Madison, the school district is possibly the last one in the state still wedded to a salary schedule — by way of a collective-bargaining agreement repeatedly extended by a union-beholden School Board while Act 10 was held up in court.

In 2013, Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham said “What will be different, this time“? The Superintendent further cited Long Beach and Boston as beacons in her Rotary speech.

However, based on recently released 2015-2016 budget slides (PDF) and Molly Beck’s summary, it appears that the same service, status quo governance model continues, unabated.

A focus on Adult Employment:

“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.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situatio

Are Administrators Golden?

The Single Best Idea for Reforming K-12 Education; ” Stop Running the system for the sake of the system.

Dirty little secret of US ed spending: Since 1950, “US schools increased their non-teaching positions by 702%.”; Ranks #2 in world on non teacher staff spending.

“Reverting to the mean“.

Molly Beck

Mary Burke, the incumbent Madison School Board member who unsuccessfully challenged Gov. Scott Walker last month, confirmed Friday she will seek re-election in April. But Arlene Silveira, the longest serving board member and in her second stint as president, will not seek another term.

And Anna Moffit, who has served on the district’s special education advisory council, announced Saturday she’ll seek the seat currently held by Silveira. Silveira confirmed in a text message to the State Journal on Sunday that she will not run again.

Only Burke’s and Silveira’s seats are up in 2015. School board members are elected as at-large members.
Silveira was first elected in 2006 when Art Rainwater was superintendent and has since helped hire two superintendents as well as an interim leader.
She oversaw some of the most dramatic events in the district’s recent history, including in 2011 when Walker successfully sought to limit collective bargaining for public school teachers — a move that the Madison teachers union fought in court until this year when the state Supreme Court upheld the law.

The same year, the board faced another polarizing debate after the Urban League of Greater Madison’s then-executive director Kaleem Caire proposed a charter school aimed at reducing the persistently low achievement levels of the district’s black students. The board ended up voting against the proposal after months of tense discussion.

Notes and links on Mary Burke, Arlene Silveira and Anna Moffit.

Newsletter (PDF) via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email:

“Love their Union” came through loud and clear as MTI-represented District employees in all five (5) MTI bargaining units voted overwhelmingly to recertify MTI as their Union. The teacher unit voted 2,624 to recertify (88% of the eligible voters), while the educational assistant unit (EA-MTI) voted 549 (77%); the clerical/technical unit (SEE-MTI) voted 180 (77%); the substitute teacher unit (USO-MTI) voted 359 (73.5%); and the security assistant unit (SSA-MTI) voted 22 (81.5%). In all, 85.35% of the eligible MTI voters voted in the recertification election. MTI has not been challenged since it became the bargaining agent for teachers in 1964. Since its creation, MTI has grown from 900 to 4,700 members, and has gained the reputation as one of the most successful public sector Unions in the country. It is Governor Walker’s Act 10 that forced the vote this year. MTI had to pay fees of $3,550 to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission to conduct the election. Additional costs were experienced for educational and promotional materials related to the election which, under Act 10, must be conducted annually.

The large turnout is a testament to MTI members’ appreciation and support of their Union, and to the hard work of the over 200 MTI Member Organizers who reached out to engage their colleagues in conversations about their Union. MTI members clearly understand that students & staff will be better served if we continue to “Stand Together.” Thanks to all who made their voice heard by voting.

Madison Teachers, Inc.:

Shortly after 2:00 pm today, the WERC posted the recertification results on their webpage. All MTI bargaining units have successfully recertified in BIG NUMBERS! Over 85% of all eligible voters cast ballots in the recertification election. Of those who voted, over 98% voted to recertify.

In order to recertify, each union needed 51% of all eligible voters to cast a ballot in favor of recertification. Each MTI bargaining unit beat that requirement by over 20 percentage points, with the MTI Teacher unit leading the way with 88% of all eligible voters casting a ballot to recertify.

11.24.2014 Solidarity newsletter (PDF).

Chris Rickert:

It’s no surprise Democratic nominee for governor and Madison School Board member Mary Burke isn’t saying how she plans to vote Monday on a proposed school district budget that includes a $100 tax increase for the average homeowner.
For purely political reasons, dropping that particular dime would be a pretty dumb thing to do.

Budgets are way more than just their impact on taxpayers/voters, though. They also reflect a school district’s priorities and approach to educating children and compensating teachers.

Burke hasn’t released an education plan in her campaign for governor, so it might be nice to know how she feels about some of those details before they start counting the votes nine days from now.

Specifically, I asked her about:

$4.1 million in spending on technology upgrades, including a plan to eventually put tablet computers in the hands of most students.

$1.5 million for a new behavior plan that de-emphasizes punishment in favor of teaching positive behavior skills.

$250,000 for a new staff evaluation system.

$150,000 for a “grow your own” system for recruiting employees, including ones that — in a district with an ethnically diverse student body but an almost all-white teaching staff — are “culturally responsive.”

Continuing to provide union staff with automatic raises for seniority and degree attainment.

Burke’s response was brief, emailed, unrevealing and on-message: “They all have merits but need to be considered in light of whether we can fund them while being responsible to the taxpayers.”

A scouring of the video recordings and available minutes of this year’s budget meetings also didn’t shed much light on where she stands.

She rarely offered an opinion during the meetings, but when she did it was usually as a voice of fiscal restraint, questioning the size of the tax levy and highlighting the need to take into account the current year budget’s effect on future years’ budgets.

Of course, it’s pretty safe to assume that Burke will vote against any budget that includes a tax increase. She has reminded reporters that’s what she did back in June when the preliminary budget was before the board. And she was the lone “no” vote on the final 2013-14 budget in November 2013, 27 days after she announced her run for governor.

Props to Rickert for diving into the details…. A no vote is rather easy, but this annual exercise simply perpetuates Madison’s monolithic K-12 governance model, despite its long term, disastrous reading results.

Molly Beck:

Mary Burke faces a key vote on the Madison School Board on Monday a week before the gubernatorial election: whether or not to back a $454 million budget that raises taxes and delivers a 1 percent base pay raise to teachers.

Burke, challenging incumbent Gov. Scott Walker in a tight race, declined Tuesday to say how she’d vote. But she pointed out to reporters that she voted against a preliminary version of the budget that included a smaller tax increase than the final proposal to be voted on Monday.
“We did have a preliminary budget earlier that had a similar type of tax increase and I voted against it because I thought it wasn’t being as responsible as we need to be to the taxpayers in Madison,” Burke said Tuesday before casting an early ballot for the Nov. 4 election. “Certainly that issue will come up Monday night.”

If she backs the budget, she risks giving ammunition to Walker and other Republicans in a race that is going down to the wire.

Much more, here.

2014-2015 Madison School District budget notes and links.

Pat Schneider:

The conservative legal group Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has brought suit against Madison’s public schools through a plaintiff who does not have standing to bring the “scandalous” allegations of violations of teachers’ rights included in its complaint, school district officials claim in a court filing.

Plaintiff David Blaska, a conservative blogger, “is not a teacher in the district nor an employee of the District and he therefore lacks both standing and a factual basis on which to assert those allegations,” school officials say in their answer to a lawsuit brought last month against the Madison Metropolitan School District, the Madison School Board and labor union Madison Teachers, Inc.

In pleadings filed in Dane County Circuit Court last week, school officials and the union asked the court to strike portions of the complaint referring to union dues, fair share payments and other issues regarding employees, calling them “immaterial, impertinent and scandalous.”

WILL, not Blaska, is actually the “party in interest,” or entity that would benefit from the suit, Madison public school officials assert.

The lawsuit filed last month challenges the legality of labor contracts for Madison teachers and other school district employees that were negotiated and entered into after the 2011 enactment of Act 10, Gov. Scott Walker’s signature legislation curtailing the collective bargaining power of public employees.

Todd Milewski:

A data analysis has put Wisconsin as the sixth-best state for teachers.

The analysis by personal finance website WalletHub scored states and the District of Columbia based on 18 factors, including salary, job openings and school safety.

Wisconsin ranked no higher than seventh in any category, but it scored among the top 15 in five areas: average number of hours worked, best school system, wage disparity, commute time and median annual salary.

States that had higher rankings than Wisconsin in some individual categories were brought down in the weighted overall score for low performance in other areas, said WalletHub spokesperson Jill Gonzalez.

She stressed it was an objective look at the landscape for educators.

“It’s not like we took a survey and asked teachers what they think,” Gonzalez said. “This is just the raw data.”

Wyoming ranked as the best state for teachers, followed by Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Virginia.

North Carolina was at the bottom of the list, trailing Mississippi and West Virginia.

The Neenah Superintendent wrote a letter to Madison School Board Member & Gubernatorial Candidate Mary Burke on 19 September.

Ms. Burke recently apologized for her Act 10 remarks:

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke has apologized to the superintendent of the Neenah school district for comments she made on the campaign trail.

Burke had been citing the district as an example of negative effects she says have been caused in Wisconsin schools by the law known as Act 10 that effectively ended collective bargaining for teachers.

District administrator Mary Pfeiffer said Friday that Burke reached out to her on Wednesday and apologized by phone. Pfeiffer says Burke agreed not to use Neenah as an example again.

Neenah Superintendent Dr. Mary Pfeiffer’s letter to Mary Burke, via a kind reader (PDF):

Neenah Joint School District
410 South Commercial Street
Neenah, WI 54956
Tel: (920) 751-6800
Fax: (920) 751-6809

Burke for Wisconsin
PO Box 2479
Madison, WI 53701
September 19, 2014

Dear Ms. Burke,

On behalf of the Neenah Joint School District I would like to express my disappointment regarding your use of our District as an example of your perceived negative impact of Act 10 on education as reported by John McCormack in the Weekly Standard and at least one additional news publication in the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

In your position as a Madison school board member, I’m sure you’ve seen that Act 10 has created a variety of challenges for school districts across Wisconsin, but I’m sure you’ve also seen plenty of positives as well. It is unfair and misleading to claim that Act 10 is the primary reason why one specific candidate chose to accept a position in Minnesota over an opening in the Neenah Joint School District. There are many reasons why candidates choose to work in other districts and certainly some effects of Act 10 may factor into those decisions. However, to make a blanket statement that Act 10 is the reason why teachers are leaving school districts in Wisconsin (in this case the Neenah Joint School District), especially by citing only one candidate’s decision to go elsewhere, is an unfortunate exaggeration at best.

We are extremely proud of our schools in Neenah and incredibly proud of the staff we have assembled both prior to and since the passage of Act 10. We have never settled with an inferior candidate to fill a position and will never do that to our students or families.

Since you have not reached out to me to learn more about our District, I will provide to you some data points that you might find revealing about why we continue to be a high performing District in Wisconsin.

Since Act 10, we have faced, and met, the difficult challenges necessary to support student learning while retaining our excellent staff.

we have significantly reduced an unsustainable $184 million unfunded liability regarding our Other Post Employment Benefits (OPEB). Meanwhile, we still provide all of our most veteran employees a $100,000 retirement benefit. New employees are also provided OPEB benefits and that is something most districts have eliminated. As you are aware, this is in addition to the state retirement benefit.

we have reduced class sizes and increased the number of our certified staff.

we have had no certified staff (teacher) layoffs since Act 10.

our school board has supported pools of dollars for 2% salary increases (above the CPI) and 2% one-time stipend awards every year for all employee groups for a total of4%.

over the past two years, 57 certified staff members have received a $5,000 or more increase in their salary.

more than 33% of certified staff received a 3% or higher salary increase in 2013-14,

with 6% of them receiving a 6% increase or higher.

our insurance costs are the lowest in our area.

we have no long-term debt.

our mill rate remains the lowest in our area at $8.53 and a decrease for the third consecutive year.

I respectfully ask that you stop using Neenah as an example of the negative ramifications of Act 10. This request has nothing to do with my personal feelings or political stance. It is about a dedicated staff that is proud to work in Neenah. I would be p1eased to speak with you further about this issue.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Dr. Mary Pfeiffer ~
Superintendent of Schools
Neenah Joint School District
Copy: Neenah Joint School District Board of Education Members

Act 10 notes and links.

Neenah plans to spend $80,479,210 for 6,226 students (DPI) during the 2014-2015 school year, or $12,926 per student (PDF Document). Ms. Burke’s Madison School Board plans to spend more than $15,000 per student during the same period, 16% more than Neenah.

“Plenty of Resources“.

Chris Rickert

District spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson acknowledged that some teachers had been evaluated “inconsistently” but noted that the new evaluations, while time-consuming, will be limited to once every three years.

School Board President Arlene Silveira also said the board has made it clear to Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham that evaluations are a priority and “the hope is that they will be more of a focus.”

The Department of Public Instruction says the new Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness System can be used “as one piece of data” when making “high-stakes human resource decisions,” such as termination and giving pay raises.

That’s not going to happen anytime soon in Madison, the only district in the state that, according to Lipp, still has a collective bargaining agreement three years after the union-killing Act 10.

“As long as we have a union contract, it won’t,” he said.

Strauch-Nelson said “the new system won’t change how the district makes employment decisions or compensation,” but it “will be used to tailor support for teachers and inform professional development.”

Madison 2005 (reflecting 1998):

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
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.

In 1998, the Madison School Board adopted an important academic goal: “that all students complete the 3rd grade able to read at or beyond grade level”. We adopted this goal in response to recommendations from a citizen study group that believed that minority students who are not competent as readers by the end of the third grade fall behind in all academic areas after third grade.

As of 2013, the situation has not changed, unfortunately.

Madison, 2014, the view from Milwaukee:

The largest state teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, gave $1.3 million last month to the Greater Wisconsin Committee, a liberal group that has been running ads critical of Walker. Two of WEAC’s political action committees have given a total of $83,128 to Burke directly.

On the other side, the American Federation for Children said last year in a brochure that in the 2012 elections in Wisconsin, including the recalls that year, it had spent $2.4 million supporting pro-voucher candidates.

Along with family members, Dick and Betsy DeVos have given about $343,000 to Walker since 2009. The Grand Rapids, Mich., couple made their fortune in the marketing firm Amway and now support the voucher school movement.

The elections are critical because in general, each candidate’s stance on the issue of vouchers is largely dictated by their political party affiliation. If Republican candidates maintain control of both houses and the governor’s seat, voucher-friendly legislation is more likely to pass.

Democrats are trying to take control of the state Senate. Republicans hold the chamber 17-15, with one GOP-leaning seat vacant. Republicans have a stronger majority in the Assembly and the election is unlikely to change that.

Senate Democrats would oppose the expansion of voucher schools until standards and requirements are established that put those private schools on the same footing as public schools, Senate Minority Leader Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said.

…….

Walker on Wednesday also challenged Burke’s record on the Madison School Board.

He noted that the graduation rate for black students in Madison is lower than the graduation rate for black students in MPS.

Walker said Burke has had a chance to use his Act 10 law to save the taxpayers millions in Madison, and put those dollars toward alleviating the achievement gap.

“She’s failed to do that,” Walker said.

Burke responded that Madison is a fiscally responsible district that is one of the few in the state operating under its levy cap.

Madison still has a contract because the teachers union there challenged the Act 10 law in court, and a circuit court judge ruling initially swung in its favor. The teachers union subsequently bargained a contract this year and next year with the district.

Then this summer, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld Walker’s Act 10 law.

Madison 2014, gazing into the mirror:

Gov. Scott Walker took the campaign against Democratic opponent Mary Burke to her front door Wednesday, accusing the one-term Madison School Board member of not doing enough to improve black students’ graduation rates in Madison.

Walker argued that the Madison School Board could have put more money toward raising graduation rates and academic achievement if it had taken advantage of his controversial 2011 measure known as Act 10, which effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers, instead of choosing to negotiate a contract with its teachers union for the 2015-16 school year earlier this summer.

“Voters may be shocked to learn that the African-American graduation rate in Madison (where Mary Burke is on the board) is worse than in MKE,” Walker tweeted Wednesday morning.

Burke shot back that Walker’s comments were “short sighted” and showed “a lack of knowledge” of how to improve student academic achievement.

In 2013, 53.7 percent of black students in Madison graduated in four years. In Milwaukee, the rate was 58.3 percent, according to state Department of Public Instruction data. That gap is smaller than it was in 2012, when the 4-year completion rate among black students was 55 percent in Madison and 62 percent in Milwaukee.

Overall, the 2013 graduation rates for the two largest school districts in Wisconsin was 78.3 percent in Madison and 60.6 percent in Milwaukee.

Under Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, the district has made progress in the last year toward improving overall student achievement, Burke said in a call with reporters. School Board president Arlene Silveira also said Wednesday the district has started to move the needle under Cheatham.

“Is it enough progress? No. We still have a lot of work to go, and whether you’re talking about African-American (graduation rates) in Madison or talking about (rates) in Milwaukee, they are too low,” Burke said. “But the key to improving student learning, that anyone who really looks at education knows, is the quality of the teacher in the classroom.”

Decades go by, yet the status quo reigns locally.

A few background links:

1. http://www.wisconsin2.org

2. Wisconsin K-12 Spending Dominates “Local Transfers”.

3. Mandarins vs. leaders The Economist:

Central to his thinking was a distinction between managers and leaders. Managers are people who like to do things right, he argued. Leaders are people who do the right thing. Managers have their eye on the bottom line. Leaders have their eye on the horizon. Managers help you to get to where you want to go. Leaders tell you what it is you want. He chastised business schools for focusing on the first at the expense of the second. People took MBAs, he said, not because they wanted to be middle managers but because they wanted to be chief executives. He argued that “failing organisations are usually over-managed and under-led”.

Mr Bennis believed leaders are made, not born. He taught that leadership is a skill—or, rather, a set of skills—that can be learned through hard work. He likened it to a performance. Leaders must inhabit their roles, as actors do. This means more than just learning to see yourself as others see you, though that matters, too. It means self-discovery. “The process of becoming a leader is similar, if not identical, to becoming a fully integrated human being,” he said in 2009. Mr Bennis knew whereof he spoke: he spent a small fortune on psychoanalysis as a graduate student, dabbled in “channelling” and astrology while a tenured professor and wrote a wonderful memoir, “Still Surprised”.

2009: The elimination of “revenue limits and economic conditions” from collective bargaining arbitration by Wisconsin’s Democratically controlled Assembly and Senate along with Democratic Governer Jim Doyle:

To make matters more dire, the long-term legislative proposal specifically exempts school district arbitrations from the requirement that arbitrators consider and give the greatest weight to revenue limits and local economic conditions. While arbitrators would continue to give these two factors paramount consideration when deciding cases for all other local governments, the importance of fiscal limits and local economic conditions would be specifically diminished for school district arbitration.

A political soundbyte example:

Candidate Burke’s “operating under its levy cap” soundbyte was a shrewd, easily overlooked comment, yet neglects to point out Madison’s property tax base wealth vs. Milwaukee, the District’s spending levels when state revenue limits were put in place and the local referendums that have approved additional expenditures (despite open questions on where the additional funds were spent).

I hope that she will be more detailed in future comments. We’ve had decades of soundbytes and routing around tough choices.

Madison’s challenges, while spending and staffing more than most, will continue to be under the political microscope.

I hope that we see a substantive discussion of K-12 spending, curriculum and our agrarian era structures.

The candidates on Education:

Mary Burke:

Education has always offered a way up to a good job and a better life. It’s the fabric of our communities, and it’s the key to a strong economy in the long term.

As co-founder of the AVID/TOPs program, a public-private partnership that is narrowing the achievement gap for low income students, Mary knows that every Wisconsin student prepared to work hard can realize their dreams if given the support they need. By bringing together area high schools, the Boys & Girls Club, technical colleges, businesses and the University, Mary made a real difference for students, many of whom are the first in their family to attend college. The first class graduated last spring, and in September, over 90% of those students enrolled in post-secondary education.

Mary believes Wisconsin schools should be among the best in the nation—and she knows that making historic cuts isn’t the way to do it. She’ll work every day to strengthen our public education system, from K-12 to our technical colleges and university system. Mary strongly opposed the statewide expansion of vouchers—as governor, she’ll work to stop any further expansion, and ensure that all private schools taking public dollars have real accountability measures in place.

Scott Walker:

“We trust teachers, counselors and administrators to provide our children world-class instruction, to motivate them and to keep them safe. In the vast majority of cases, education professionals are succeeding, but allowing some schools to fail means too many students being left behind. By ensuring students are learning a year’s worth of knowledge during each school year and giving schools the freedom to succeed, Wisconsin will once again become a model for the nation.” — Scott Walker

For years, Wisconsin had the distinction of being a national leader in educational reform. From the groundbreaking Milwaukee Parental Choice Program to policies aimed at expanding the role of charter schools in communities across the state, Wisconsin was viewed as a pioneer in educational innovation and creativity.

Wisconsin used to rank 3rd in fourth grade reading, now we’re in the middle of the pack at best with some of the worst achievement gaps in the nation.

Fortunately, Wisconsin has turned a corner and is once again becoming a leader in educational excellence by refocusing on success in the classroom. This has been done by pinpointing the following simple but effective reforms:

• Improving transparency
• Improving accountability
• Creating choice

We are working to restore Wisconsin’s rightful place as an education leader. Our students, our teachers, and our state’s future depend on our continued implementation of reform.

A look at District spending:

Per student spending: Milwaukee’s 2013-2014 budget: $948,345,675 for 78,461 students or $12,086/student. Budget details (PDF).

Madison plans to spend $402,464,374 for 27,186 students (some pre-k) this year or about $14,804/student, 22% more than Milwaukee. Details.

And, finally, 2010: WEAC: $1.57 million for four senators.

Molly Beck

A new way to evaluate teachers, known as the Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness System, begins this school year across Wisconsin — giving equal weight to teachers’ performance in the classroom as judged by principals and student academic achievement.

The evaluations are mandated as part of Wisconsin’s waiver to the No Child Left Behind requirements. Under the program, each teacher sets a student performance goal.

Madison Teachers Inc. president Mike Lipp said teachers welcome the new evaluations as a way to improve their instruction, noting that some longtime teachers haven’t been reviewed in decades.

Now, principals and assistant principals will need to evaluate each of their teachers in a more extensive way once every three years — the same for principals, who will be evaluated by Cheatham and other administrative staff.

Principals have received training to help them balance their new load of administrative duties with what’s already on their plate, including working with parents, Cheatham said.

Matthew Richmond (PDF), via several kind readers:

Why do American public schools spend more of their operating budgets on non-teachers than almost every other country in the world, including nations that are as prosperous and humane as ours? We can’t be certain. But we do know this:
» The number of non-teachers on U.S. school payrolls has soared over the past fifty years, far more rapidly than the rise in teacher numbers. And the amount of money in district budgets consumed by their salaries and benefits has grown apace for at least the last twenty years.

Underneath the averages and totals, states and districts vary enormously in how many non-teachers they employ. Why do Illinois taxpayers pay for forty staff per thousand pupils while Connecticut pays for eighty-nine? Why does Orange County, Florida (Orlando) employ eleven teacher aides per thousand students when Miami-Dade gets by with seven?

What accounts for such growth—and such differences? We don’t know nearly as much as we’d like on this topic, but it’s not a total mystery. The advent and expansion of special education, for example, obviously gave rise to substantial demand for classroom aides and specialists to address
the needs of youngsters with disabilities. The widening of school duties to include more food service, health care, and sundry other responsibilities accounts for more.

But such additions to the obligations of schools are not peculiar to the United States and they certainly cannot explain big staffing differences from place to place within our country.

Retired Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club:

“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.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Average GPA in Core Subjects in 8th and 9th Grades and Percentage of Students Receiving a D or F in a Core Course in 9th Grade, by Feeder School, 2010 – 2013:

Madison School District 1.3MB PDF Presentation:

In focus groups, several teachers noted what they perceived to be a lack of adequate preparation their students received in previous years, and in some cases a lack of understanding about the curriculum to which their students have been exposed.

In focus groups at each MMSD school, a broad majority of students stated they have been in classes where the instructional purpose and relevance of what they were learning was unclear.

Each set of stakeholders interviewed for this project referenced the challenges posed by poor alignment of instruction from one grade level to the next, particularly between middle and high schools.

In focus groups, several teachers and students alike noted that adjusting to increased levels of homework in high school was a challenge for many.

Student focus groups reported varying experiences in Middle School with homework counting towards students’ overall grades may be contributing to a difficult transition into high school for some students

There is significant lack of course syllabi across schools.

When asked what a diploma should mean, there was much consensus across stakeholder groups that it should include the following, but also a lack of confidence that an MMSD diploma currently represented each of these for all graduates:

Competence in core subject areas
Exposure to a broad curriculum including the arts
Reading and critical thinking skills
Having a global perspective
Knowledge and ability to access employment and/or postsecondary education
Ability to work in groups
Curiosity as a lifelong learner
“Real world” experience tied to the classroom
Citizenship and self-sufficiency
“21st Century skills”

Recommendations
Redefine What an MMSD Diploma Means By Setting Common Learning Outcomes and Assessments for All Graduates

Create Clear Personalized Student Pathways

Define Multiple Career-Field and Academic Pathways for High School Students

Engage Deeply with Local Postsecondary Stakeholders for Alignment and Expansion of Dual Credit Options

Continue to Engage With Local Employers for Alignment and Student Work-Based Learning Opportunities

Continue to Promote and Develop AVID as a Pathway Option, While Monitoring More Closely Before Expanding

Encourage Innovation in Projects and Assessments

Regarding the “lack of course syllabi”, full, required implementation of Infinite Campus (or similar) would address this issue. Millions have been spent…

Number of Students in Class of 2013 Who Took AP World Language Courses, by High School and Feeder Middle School, 2010-2013

The Most Failed Courses in 9th Grade with Percentage of Students With One Failed Semester by School, 2013

AP courses available at all four comprehensive high schools:

Calculus AB
Calculus BC
French Language
Spanish Language
Environmental Science
Statistics
European History

Select AP courses not available at all high schools:

Proportion of Students Enrolled in AP Courses and Scoring a 3 or Higher on AP Exams by Race and SpEd/ELL Status, 2013

The Most Failed Courses in 9th Grade with Percentage of Students With One Failed Semester by School, 2013

Background links: English 10

Small Learning Communities

High School “Redesign”

Pat Schneider:

As Madison teachers prepare to head back to school, big changes they’re facing include a new teacher evaluation system mandated by the state and a new discipline policy adopted by the Madison School Board, according to Madison Teachers Inc. president Mike Lipp.

“There’s a lot of confusion and some apprehension” about the new teacher evaluation system, Lipp said. And of the district’s new Behavior Education Plan, designed to cut the number of suspensions, Lipp said he is “100 percent for keeping kids in class. There’s a cost, though.”

“I’m hoping these things work, I really do,” said Lipp, athletic director at West High School, where he formerly taught science.

The teacher evaluation and student behavior initiatives will be the focus of professional development sessions for teachers on Aug. 27 and 28. Students begin returning to school on Sept. 2, the day after Labor Day, with staggered start days according to grade.

Teachers have long been evaluated and sections of the union contract have called for evaluation, Lipp said. But Wisconsin school districts are required under state law to implement one of two codified systems this coming school year.

Amanda Ripley:

In the meantime, it does appear that U.S. principals are overestimating poverty compared to principals in other countries. Does it matter? It depends on the principal. No matter how you measure it, child poverty is high in the U.S. compared to other developed countries, so the problems are real and present in many U.S. schools. But hyper-awareness of poverty can make a mediocre principal worse—by providing a compelling explanation for education failures that conveniently shifts much of the blame to the home and society at large. And when combined with the reductionist, blame-poverty narratives propagated in many U.S. education colleges, books and blogs, this mindset can excuse all manner of in-school failures.

One of the things I noticed while interviewing principals and teachers in other countries is that they were not nearly as conscious of poverty stats as their American peers. In every country I visited (including Poland and South Korea, which have higher poverty rates than, say, Finland), I asked principals roughly what percentage of their kids would be considered disadvantaged. None of them could tell me off the top of their heads.

In a strong system, that obliviousness can be an asset. One Finnish teacher who had a significant number of refugee students in his class explained it to me this way: “I don’t want to think about their backgrounds too much. I don’t want to have too much empathy for them because I have to teach. If I thought about all of this too much, I would give better marks to them for worse work. I’d think, ‘Oh, you poor kid. Oh, well, what can I do?’ That would make my job too easy.”

The pursuit of redistributed taxpayer funds (“grants”, referendums, annual spending growth, staffing) drives everything.

Molly Beck

CUNA Mutual Group has promised more than $1 million to a new program aimed at training and keeping new teachers developed by the Madison School District and the UW-Madison School of Education.

Officials announced the company’s $1.2 million commitment Thursday at Wright Middle School. It is the largest grant the organization has awarded, said CUNA Mutual Foundation executive director Steve Goldberg.

“This is also the largest opportunity we’ll ever have to make a difference in the future trajectory of our community and especially the young people who live here,” Goldberg said.

The money will fund the mentoring of 150 new teachers starting this fall and for the next three years. District spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson said the district will “be working to develop a sustainable model for years” after that.

The project, dubbed “Forward Madison,” would provide mentors and coaches for new teachers, improve professional development for teachers, and create a program for district students to become teachers to diversify teaching ranks. The CUNA Mutual grant only pays for the mentoring.

CUNA funds have been involved in a number of Madison School District programs over the years. How have they performed?

My sense is that Madison has added many “programs” over the years, yet the District’s long term disastrous reading problem, remains.

Madison Schools’ Administration has “introduced more then 18 programs and initiatives for elementary teachers since 2009”.

I asked a former Madison Superintendent if the program, coaching and “professional development” program growth reflected an inability to address the core issues? The then Superintendent responded that “there is some truth to that”.

Perhaps the monolithic structure has run its course.

Alan Talaga:

I think the Wisconsin State Journal’s editorial board is generally pretty fair. The editorials, mostly written by editor Scott Milfred, come from a fiscally-conservative, socially-liberal perspective. While I often disagree with their views, I admire their principled stance on marriage equality and transparency in all levels of government.

Sometimes the State Journal spills ink tilting at windmills like suggesting Walker and legislative Republicans were seriously going to consider redistricting reform, even when the latest round of redistricting gave the GOP a 10-year lock on control of the Assembly. Other times, they dilute their message a bit by trying a bit too hard to be even-handed.

However, those attempts at even-handedness go out the window when it comes to teachers’ unions, with Madison Teachers Inc. as the State Journal’s primary target. I, myself, have many criticisms of MTI, but the editorial board has handpicked them to be public employee boogeyman number one.

I would think that the elimination of almost every single teacher’s union in the state would make for a less tempting target, but this editorial board still feels a need to take weird potshots at MTI.

A couple of weeks ago, the State Journal ran an editorial in support of year-round schools, which is a good idea that I wholly support. But then much of the editorial suggested that MTI was the reason we don’t have any year-round school programs in Madison.

“Badger Rock Middle School is a good example of why the district should insist on more options with its teachers,” it read. “Badger Rock is a charter school that employs union teachers, so it follows the traditional school calendar.”

This seemed odd to me, as I had never read anything about MTI being opposed the idea of year-round schools. Obviously, I remember their opposition to Madison Prep, but that’s involved a ton of issues.

Chad Alderman, via a kind reader:

The Census Bureau’s latest Public Education Finances Report is out, and it shows that employee benefits continue to take on a rising share of district expenditures.

The table below uses 20 years of data (all years that are available online) to show total current expenditures (i.e. it excludes capital costs and debt), expenditures on base salaries and wages, and expenditures on benefits like retirement coverage, health insurance, tuition reimbursements, and unemployment compensation. Although it would be interesting to sort out which of these benefits have increased the most, the data don’t allow us to draw those granular conclusions. But they do tell us that teachers and district employees are forgoing wage increases on behalf of benefit enhancements.

From 2001 to 2012 alone, public education spending increased 49 percent, but, while salaries and wages increased 36 percent, employee benefits increased 96 percent. Twenty years ago, districts spent more than four dollars in wages to every one dollar they spent on benefits. Now that ratio has dropped under three-to-one. Benefits now eat up more than 20 percent of district budgets, or $2,363 per student, and those numbers are climbing.

Much more on Madison’s 2014-2015 budget, here.

Wisconsin State Journal

The president of the Madison teachers union just lamented an “embarrassingly low” wage increase for his members of 0.25 percent.

But that doesn’t include automatic pay raises most teachers will receive for their years of experience.

A large majority of Madison school teachers (in past years it has ranged from two-thirds to three-quarters of educators) will get longevity raises averaging between 2 percent and

3 percent, according to the district.

Add that to the 0.25 percent and the real raise for most Madison teachers will be about 10 times more than advertised.

In addition, a smaller group of teachers will get extra pay for completing higher education coursework toward advanced degrees. And under the district’s new contract for the 2015-16 year, teachers who supervise certain extracurricular clubs as well as those who take on work related to special education can earn more.

Much more, here.

James Wigderson, via a kind reader:

We should not have been surprised when Democratic candidate for governor Mary Burke voted with the rest of the Madison school board to negotiate a contract extension with the teachers union. After all, it was just a month ago that Burke told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a video recorded interview that she believes she didn’t need Act 10 to get the same concessions from the unions. “I think it was only fair to ask for contributions to health care and to pensions, um, but I think those could have been negotiated, ah certainly firmly but fairly.”

Let’s set aside that negotiating a contract extension with the union is likely a violation of the law, as attorney Rick Esenberg of WILL informed the school board. Okay, that’s a little bit like saying to the dinosaurs, “setting aside that giant meteor head towards Earth…”

But setting the issue with the law aside, we’re about to about to see whether Burke’s claim is correct that she is capable of achieving the benefits of Act 10 without having to rely upon the powers granted by Act 10 to local government bodies. If we’re to use upon history as our guide, Burke is unlikely to prove anything except that the passage of Act 10 by Governor Scott Walker and the legislature was necessary.

After the passage of Act 10, Madison teachers staged a massive “sick out” in order to protest Walker’s reforms. Despite a public statement from then-WEAC President Mary Bell to go back to work and a request by the Madison Metropolitan School District to cancel a scheduled day off, Madison’s teachers continued to stay out of work to continue the protest. In fact, a MacIver investigation discovered that John Matthews of Madison Teachers, Inc. lied about the union’s involvement in planning the protest.

Against that background, and a determination not to be bound by the terms of Act 10, the Madison teachers union and the school district negotiated the first contract extension into 2013. Instead of the 12.6 percent health care contribution called for under Act 10 and even supported by Bell, the district was only able to negotiate a 5 percent health care contribution. The agreement did allow an increase to 10 percent the following year.

Related:

Teacher Union Collective Bargaining Continues in Madison, Parent Bargaining “like any other union” in Los Angeles.

Act 10.

Mary Burke.

Ben Austin, via a kind email:

Last week was an important moment in the Parent Power movement.

On Friday, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy came to West Athens Elementary School in South LA to sign a groundbreaking Partnership Agreement with the leadership of the West Athens Parents Union, called the “Aguilas de West Athens” (AWA) – all without the parents having to gather a single Parent Trigger petition.

This negotiated Partnership Agreement is the result of collaboration and cooperation on the part of both the school district and parents. It invests $300,000 in new staffing positions (including a school psychologist and psychiatric social worker) to address issues of school climate and student safety; increases focus on Common Core implementation and professional development for teachers; and commits to strengthening parent voice and parent power in the school over the coming year.

There has been a ton of good media coverage (which you can read on our blog here), but we thought you might be most interested in hearing directly from the parents themselves who have led this effort. Below is a short video from Winter Hall, one of the parent leaders from West Athens, sharing her story about why she got involved and how the Parents Union was able to win these changes for their kids:
Winter Play

The efforts at West Athens are an important barometer of where the idea and the movement behind parent trigger are heading in California. As more and more districts come to terms with the political power and moral authority that organized parents now possess, we will continue to see more and more proof points of parents able to use their power to create “kids first” reforms at their school, regardless of whether or not they actually use the law to “trigger” the change.

Thank you again for your support. We will continue to keep you updated on everything happening at West Athens Elementary and elsewhere.

Parent Revolution

Related MTI (Madison Teachers, Inc.) Red Fills Doyle Auditorium; Collective Bargaining to Begin.

Related links:

Oconomowoc & Madison.

Madison’s Distastrous Reading Results.

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.

2008: Commentary & Links on Madison’s reading results.

Pat Schnieder:

Maybe the formal deliberations on strategy don’t start until a closed session of the Madison School Board on Thursday, May 15, but engagement over a proposed extension of the teachers contract already has begun.

School board member Ed Hughes is stirring the pot with his remarks that the contract should not be extended without reconsidering hiring preferences for members of Madison Teachers, Inc., extended under the current contract.

John Matthews, executive director of MTI, replies that Hughes probably didn’t mind preference being given to internal transfers over external hires when he was in a union.

“When Ed was in the union at the Department of Justice, I doubt he would find considering outsiders to have preference over an internal transfer to be satisfactory,” Matthews said in an email.

Members of MTI are planning to offer their arguments for extending the contract when the school board meets at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Doyle Administration Building, 545 W. Dayton St.

Mary Burke votes for labor talks with Madison teachers. Matthew DeFour weighs in as well.

Madison Teachers, Inc. members fill the school board work group room, and the hallway outside. pic.twitter.com/UaIN004Pf7

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeckWSJ) May 12, 2014

Related: Collective Bargainain, Act 10 and Retired Ripon Superintendent’s 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club.

The Madison School District (3MB PDF):

Five Priority Areas (just like the “Big 10”) but who is counting! – page 6:
– Common Core
– Behavior Education Plan
– Recruitment and hiring
– New educator induction
– Educator Effectiveness
– Student, parent and staff surveys
– Technology plan

2014-2015 “budget package” 3MB PDF features some interesting changes, beginning on page 92, including:

1. + $986,314 to other Wisconsin public school districts due to Outbound open enrollment growth and $160,000 for Youth Options (page 108)

2. + 5.3% Teacher & Staff Health insurance spending is $44,067,547, or 11% of total spending! (Page 92). Total teacher & staff benefits are $73,248,235 or 18% of total spending. Let’s compare (as best we can):

Madison: 18% budget web page. Note, Madison’s is likely higher than 18% as I did not count all “funds” beyond teachers and certain staff. I’ve sent an email to the District for a complete number.

Middleton: 15.7% 2013-2014 Budget (PDF) Middleton – Cross Plains School District Budget web page. Middleton’s document summarizes spending across all funds (Page 8), something that I did not find in the Madison document (Pages 110-123 summarize aspects of Madison’s spending).

Boston: 14.1% Boston Schools 2013-2014-2015 budget xls file) Boston schools’ budget information.

Long Beach: 15.9% (Long Beach Budget Document (PDF)) Long Beach budget information.

Madison Superintendent Cheatham cited the Boston and Long Beach Schools for “narrowing their achievement gap” during a July, 2013 “What Will be Different This Time” presentation to the Madison Rotary Club.

3. “Educational Services” (Page 96) benefits are $21,581,653 up 4.5%.

4. “Food Services” (Page 98) benefits are $2,446,305, up 4.2%.

5. 10.3%: MSCR’s health insurance cost increase (page 99). MSCR spending and property tax growth (“Fund 80”) has been controversial in the past.

The Madison School District’s per student spending has been roughly constant for several years at about $15,000. Yet, certain budget elements are growing at a rather high rate, indicating an ability to manage effectively by reallocating and raising tax dollars or the presence of a rather fluid budget.

“focused instead on adult employment”

Retired Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 Madison Rotary speech is always worth revisiting:

Zimman’s talk ranged far and wide. He discussed Wisconsin’s K-12 funding formula (it is important to remember that school spending increases annually (from 1987 to 2005, spending grew by 5.10% annually in Wisconsin and 5.25% in the Madison School District), though perhaps not in areas some would prefer.

“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.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Zimman noted that the most recent State of Wisconsin Budget removed the requirement that arbitrators take into consideration revenue limits (a district’s financial condition @17:30) when considering a District’s ability to afford union negotiated compensation packages. The budget also added the amount of teacher preparation time to the list of items that must be negotiated….. “we need to breakthrough the concept that public schools are an expense, not an investment” and at the same time, we must stop looking at schools as a place for adults to work and start treating schools as a place for children to learn.”

The price of budget spaghetti manifests itself via little to no oversight – see legitimate questions on the District’s most recent $26,200,000 maintenance referendum (another tax increase looms). These documents, while reasonably detailed, are impossible to compare to recent budgets.

The demise of Lawrie Kobza’s 2 page “citizen’s budget” will lead to growing cost of living and achievement gaps, including nearby Districts such as Middleton where a comparable homeowner spends 16% less on property taxes.

Seth Jovaag:

Melissa Droessler tries not to flinch when she tells people her dream of opening a charter school in Madison.

“Even the word ‘charter’ in Madison can be emotionally charged,” she says.

But Droessler, director of Isthmus Montessori Academy, is steadfast in her belief that a century-old pedagogy created in the slums of Rome could help tackle Madison schools’ thorniest problems.

Last month, the academy submitted a proposal to open Madison’s first public Montessori school in September 2015. As Madison’s fourth charter school, it would be tuition-free and open to anyone. It would also employ unionized Madison teachers, potentially avoiding a hurdle that tripped up proponents of the Madison Preparatory Academy charter school in 2011.

Perhaps most significant, Droessler and others believe the Montessori approach could raise low-income and minority student achievement.

“The achievement gap will probably be the biggest part of our pitch,” she says “We feel it’s time for this in Madison. There’s no other motive.”

Organizers want to submit a grant application to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction by April 15 that could net $150,000 for planning costs next year. The Madison school board is expected to vote whether to green-light the application at its March 31 meeting, though any binding decision to establish the school is at least 10 months away, according to district policy governing the creation of charter schools.

Board member James Howard has toured the academy at 255 N. Sherman Ave. on the city’s near-northeast side. He says he’s interested in the proposal but needs to know more before forming an opinion. Ditto for board president Ed Hughes.

Related: Previous stillborn Madison charter initiatives include: The Studio School and the Madison Preparatory Academy IB school.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

The District has informed principals of their staffing allocations for the 2014-15 school year. Surplus notices, where the District determines such are necessary, are expected to be delivered to staff by March 19 (the Contract enables one to be declared surplus through July 1). As part of the negotiations over the 2013-14 MTI Teacher Contract, the parties agreed to significant changes to the teacher surplus reassignment and vacancy posting language. The changes were driven by the District’s desire to engage in earlier hiring.

Under the new language, teachers declared surplus will first be placed in available vacancies prior to the posting of said positions, with the goal of assigning all surplus teachers by May 1. Any positions which remain vacant as of May 1 will then be posted for voluntary internal transfer (while some vacant teaching positions in high-demand areas will be posted during the months of March and April, the majority of vacancy postings will occur on May 2). Application for voluntary internal transfer will be enabled for vacancies known by June 14. Positions becoming vacant after June 14 through the first four (4) weeks of school are not subject to posting and voluntary internal transfers are not enabled.

The benefits of the above revisions are that: 1) surplus teachers should receive earlier notice of their upcoming year teaching assignment, and; 2) by moving the “no post” date from August 1 to June 15, the District is able to offer new hires specific teaching positions approximately six weeks earlier than in the past, which the District asserts will improve their candidate pool. The potential downside to the changes is that current teaching staff will have fewer vacancies to choose from, and a shorter window of time to apply for vacancies. All MTI Faculty Representatives have received a fact sheet with information on surplus and transfer changes. Members may also call MTI Headquarters with any questions.

School allocation decisions made before the District’s budget is finalized was a controversial practice some years ago. Obviously, it continues.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Plan now to attend celebrated Professor Diane Ravitch’s presentation at the Monona Terrace on May 1. The program, commencing at 7:00 p.m., is part of The Progressive Magazine’s PUBLIC SCHOOL SHAKEDOWN (www.publicschoolshakedown.org) campaign which is designed to illustrate the negative impact on public school education, because of the financial drain caused by private/parochial charter and voucher schools. While admission is free, a suggested $5 donation is requested to support the project.

The Progressive is pulling together education experts including Ravitch (education historian and former Assistant Secretary of Education), activists, bloggers, and concerned citizens from across the country.

PUBLIC SCHOOL SHAKEDOWN is dedicated to EXPOSING the behind-the-scenes effort to privatize public schools, and CONNECTING pro-public school activists nationwide.

“Public School Shakedown will be a fantastic addition to the debate”, says Ravitch. “The Progressive is performing a great public service by helping spread the word about the galloping privatization of our public schools.”
“Free public education, doors open to all, no lotteries, is a cornerstone of our democracy. If we allow large chunks of it to be handed over to private operators, religious schools, for-profit enterprises, and hucksters, we put our democracy at risk”, Ravitch adds.

Alan Borsuk:

“Our Schools! Our Solutions!”
In eye-catching orange and white, banners and buttons proclaiming that slogan have been showing up in the last several weeks, generally in the hands or on the clothes of members and allies of the Milwaukee teachers union.
It is their four-word proclamation of opposition to plans floated (but so far, not going forward) in Milwaukee and Madison that would make it likely that some low-performing schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools system would be turned over to non-MPS charter school operators.
I find the slogan intriguing on several levels.
Level One: It is part of the energetic work leaders of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association and the Wisconsin Education Association Council, which has been involved in the campaign, are doing to try to remain relevant. Act 10, the 2011 legislation spurred by Gov. Scott Walker, stripped public employee unions of almost all their power over money and benefits, work conditions and school policies.
What’s left? That’s a challenging question for union leaders. Membership has fallen, political influence has fallen. Leaders of many school districts statewide are working with what remains of unions in more cooperative ways than I expected three years ago, but it is clear who has the upper hand.
In Milwaukee, the MTEA has reduced its staff and spending, but remains visible, active, and, in some cases, influential. The majority of the School Board is generally inclined toward the union.

Pat Schneider:

“I’m an academic,” says Slekar, a Pittsburgh-area native whose mother and grandmother were elementary school teachers and who was a classroom teacher himself before earning a Ph.D. in curriculum from University of Maryland.
“I understand scholarship, I understand evidence, I understand the role of higher education in society,” he says. “When initiatives come through, if we have solid evidence that something is not a good idea, it’s really my job to come out and say that.”
Michael Apple, an internationally recognized education theorist and professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison agrees. In the face of conservative state legislators’ push to privatize public education, “it is part of my civic responsibility to say what is happening,” says Apple.
“In a society that sees corporations as having all the rights of people, by and large education is a private good, not a public good,” he says. “I need to defend the very idea of public schools.”
Both Apple and Julie Underwood, dean of the School of Education at UW-Madison, share Slekar’s concern over the systematic privatization of education and recognize a role for scholars in the public debate about it.
…
A wide-ranging, animated, sometimes loud conversation with Slekar includes familiar controversies hotly debated around the country and in the Wisconsin Capitol, like high-stakes testing, vouchers and Common Core standards. The evidence, Slekar says flatly, shows that none of it will work to improve student learning.
The reform initiatives are instead part of a corporate takeover of public education masquerading as reform that will harm low-income and minority students before spreading to the suburbs, says Slekar, in what he calls the civil rights issue of our time.
A 30-year attack has worked to erode the legitimacy of the public education system. And teachers are taking much of the blame for the stark findings of the data now pulled from classrooms, he says.
“We’re absolutely horrible at educating poor minority kids,” says Slekar. “We absolutely know that.”
But neither the so-called reformers, nor many more casual observers, want to talk about the real reason for the disparities in achievement, Slekar says, which is poverty.
“That’s not an excuse, it’s a diagnosis,” he says, quoting John Kuhn, a firebrand Texas superintendent and activist who, at a 2011 rally, suggested that instead of performance-based salaries for teachers, the nation institute merit pay for members of Congress.

Local Education school academics have long had interactions with the Madison School District. Former Superintendent Art Rainwater works in the UW-Madison School of Education.

Further, this 122 page pdf (3.9mb) includes contracts (not sure if it is complete) between the UW-Madison School of Education and the Madison School District between 2004 and 2008. Has this relationship improved achievement?
Related: Deja Vu? Education Experts to Review the Madison School District and When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Erin Richards:

Starting in 2015’16, every school that receives taxpayer money would receive an A-F rating based on their performance in the following areas:
Achievement on state tests.
Achievement growth on state tests, based on a statistical analysis called value-added that estimates the impact schools and teachers have on student progress.
The progress in closing achievement gaps between white students and subgroups of students who are poor, of minority races or who have disabilities.
Graduation and attendance rate status and improvement.
The current school report card system went into effect two years ago and took the place of the widely disliked sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Gov. Scott Walker once pushed for using A through F grades, but a task force on school accountability had opted for a five-tiered system placing schools in categories from “significantly exceeds expectations” to “fails to meet expectations.”
The 2012-’13 report cards placed 58 schools statewide into the “fails” category. That included 49 in MPS — one is closed, so now there’s 48 — two independent charter schools authorized by the City of Milwaukee, four public schools in Racine and three public schools in Green Bay.

Matthew DeFour & Molly Beck:

Wisconsin’s lowest-performing public schools would be forced to close or reopen as charter schools and the state’s 2-year-old accountability report card would be revamped under a bill unveiled Monday.
The proposal also would require testing for taxpayer-subsidized students at private voucher schools while barring the lowest-performing schools from enrolling new voucher students. Participating private schools also could test all students for accountability purposes.
“We’re going to start holding anybody who gets public money accountable for getting results. That is the bottom line,” said Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, which plans to vote on the amended bill Thursday.
The bill makes several changes to the state’s K-12 school accountability system — including assigning schools letter grades — which itself recently replaced a decade-old system under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Wisconsin State Journal:

Madison School District Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham is a strong supporter of technology in the classroom. That’s why she is putting a $27.7 million computer plan in front of the School Board tonight.
But Cheatham also knows what really drives education, from kindergarten to high school.
“It’s the quality of teachers that matters the most,” she told the State Journal editorial board during a recent meeting.
Putting a tablet computer into the hands of every Madison student “will absolutely help teachers with instruction,” Cheatham said.
In our multi-device, always-wired world, understanding and using the latest technology is a must for today’s students and can cater to their individual needs and interests.
Ultimately, the issue is not how many devices are in a classroom but, rather, how those devices are used. The technology needs to offer more than whiz-bang special effects. It needs to open new paths to learning.
The high-dollar technology plan has attracted critics who question the cost and worry about additional “screen time,” especially for the youngest students.

Pat Schneider

The Madison Metropolitan School District’s multi-million dollar Tech Plan is spending a lot of money on devices not proven to benefit student learning, according to an assistant professor of education at Madison’s Edgewood College.
In addition, the district isn’t giving teachers, parents or students opportunities to provide meaningful feedback on the plan, said Donna Vukelich-Selva in written remarks to the Madison school board shared Monday with The Cap Times.
The School Board is scheduled to vote Monday, Jan. 27, on what is now a revised, estimated $27.7 million, five-year plan that would greatly increase the use of computers in classroom instruction. The school district pared the proposal slightly, following a community update session last week, to include fewer devices for the youngest students. The plan now would provide one computer tablet in the classroom for about every two kindergartners and 1st-graders, and a one-to-one computer ratio for students in grades 2-12.
But Vukelich-Selva said concerns that the district is moving too fast on the Tech Plan, expressed by parents and teachers at the community update Jan. 22 at Memorial High School, were dismissed.
“It is clear that many significant stakeholders in the district were not taken into account,” she wrote.
The Madison school board first considered a draft of the plan on Jan. 13.
On hearing criticism that the proposal has advanced too quickly, Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham said last week that the district has been “thorough and methodical in the development of the draft plan.”
Vukelich-Selva also said there was inadequate assessment of the impact of one-to-one computing on learning for younger students through fifth grade. She pointed to an apparent focus on technology itself rather than curricular goals.
“The huge numbers of ‘devices’ we are being told we need in our classrooms will help support a vastly expanded platform for more standardized testing,” she said.
Research shows that most large-scale evaluations of one-to-one computing initiatives have found mixed or no results, and underscore the importance of teacher mastery of using the devices, Vukelich-Selva wrote, referring specifically to an article in “Educational Leadership” from February, 2011, that is critical of one-to-one programs.

Much more on the Madison School District’s Technology Plan, here.
One would hope that prior multi-million dollar technology implementations such as Infinite Campus, would be fully implemented first.

Mary Erpenbach (and This story was made possible by supp​ort from Madison Gas & Electric, Summit Credit Union, CUNA Mutual Foundation and Aldo Leopold Nature Center.):

Today, Caire’s tone has moderated. Somewhat.
“Teachers are not to blame for the problems kids bring into the classroom,” he says. “But teachers have to teach the kids in front of them. And Madison teachers are not prepared to do that. Now we have two choices: Make excuses why these kids can’t make it and just know that they won’t. Or move beyond and see a brighter future for kids.”
Many parents back him up. And many parents of students of color say that their experience with Madison’s public schools–both as students here, themselves, and now as parents–is simply much different and much worse than what they see white students and parents experiencing.
“I just always felt like I was on as a parent, like every time I walked through the door of that school I would have to go to bat for my son,” says Sabrina Madison, mother of a West High graduate who is now a freshman at UW-Milwaukee. “Do you know how many times I was asked if I wanted to apply for this [assistance] program or that program? I would always say, ‘No, we’re good.’ And at the same time, there is not the same ACT prep or things like that for my child. I was never asked ‘Is your son prepared for college?’ I never had that conversation with his guidance counselor.”
Hedi Rudd, whose two daughters graduated from East and son from West, says it has been her experience that the schools are informally segregated by assistance programs and that students of color are more likely to be treated with disrespect by school personnel. “Walk into the cafeteria and you’ll see the kids [of color] getting free food and the white students eating in the hall. I walked into the school office one day,” she recalls. “I look young and the secretary thought I was a student. She yelled, ‘What are you doing here?’ I just looked at her and said, ‘Do you talk to your students like that?'”
Dawn Crim, the mother of a daughter in elementary school and a son in middle school, says lowered expectations for students of color regardless of family income is an ongoing problem. “When we moved to Madison in 1996, we heard that MMSD was a great school district … and for the most part it has been good for our kids and family: strong teachers, good administrators, a supportive learning environment, and we’ve been able to be very involved.”
But?
“Regarding lower expectations for kids of color, not just disadvantaged kids, we, too, have experienced the lower expectations for our kids; overall there is a feeling and a sense of lower expectations,” Crim says. “And that should not come into play. All of our kids should be respected, pushed, have high expectations and should get the best education this district says it gives.”
In the meantime, the school district has been running programs in partnership with the Urban League of Greater Madison, UW-Madison, United Way of Dane County, the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, and other organizations–all designed to lift scholastic achievement, close the gap, and get more kids graduated and on to college.
The Advancement Via Individual Determination program known as AVID (or AVID/TOPS, when coordinated with the Teens Of Promise program) is run by the district and the Boys and Girls Club here, and is a standout in a slew of public/private efforts to change the fate of students of color in Madison.
…..
At the end of the last school year, a total of four hundred forty-two students did not graduate on time from high school in Madison. One hundred nine were white, eighty-six were Hispanic, thirty-three were Asian and one hundred ninety-one were African American. If the graduation rate for African American students had been comparable to the eighty-eight percent graduation rate of white students, one hundred forty more African American students would have graduated from Madison high schools.
But they did not. While it’s true that the district actively searches out students who did not graduate on time, and works with them so that as many as possible do ultimately graduate, the black-and-white dividing line of fifty-five/eighty-eight remains for now the achievement gap’s stark, frightening, final face. What can be said is that many more Madisonians are paying attention to it, and many people in a position to make a difference are doing their level best to do something about it.
……
“One of the reasons we haven’t been as successful as we could be is because we’ve lacked focus and jumped from initiative to initiative,” she (Cheatham) says of the Madison schools.

Related: notes and links on Mary Erpanbach, Jennifer Cheatham and Madison’s long term disastrous reading scores.
Background articles:
Notes and links on the rejected Madison Preparatory IB Charter School.
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 (2005).
Notes and Links on the Madison K-12 Climate and Superintendent Hires Since 1992.
My Life and Times With the Madison Public Schools
Latest Madison Schools’ 2013-2014 $391,834,829 Budget.