schoolinfosystem.org
Nancy L Zimpher: Cooperative education is now more than 100 years old. The co-op approach, in which students alternate time in the classroom with professionally paid work directly related to their majors, was founded at the University of Cincinnati by Dean Herman Schneider in 1906. There are co-op programs today at 500 institutions in the […]
TJ Mertz: In this morning’s Wisconsin State Journal there is a story that again misrepresents the place of Madison School Community Recreation and Fund 80 in the district and the community. The chart comparing Fund 80 levies in Madison to those in other districts ignores the fact that most or all of those locales have […]
Joanne Jacobs: Reading War II is still raging as reading experts attack a New York Times story on Madison’s decision to reject federal Reading First funds in order to continue a reading program that the Times claims is effective. Education News prints as-yet unpublished letters to the Times from Reid Lyons, Robert Sweet, Louisa Moats, […]
What makes this article from Fargo interesting is how it almost exactly mirrors the findings in my home district, Hortonville, and the recent analysis of Reading Recovery done in Madison. That being, a 50% success rate for RR students. From the article: “However, West Fargo student data over time, as presented by Director of Knowledge […]
Mike Antonucci: There’s an excellent book from 1997 called The Limits of Law-Based School Reform that I think everyone – especially lawmakers and public policy experts – should read. But the title alone should be enough for all of us who think passing a law to address a perceived education problem is sufficient to solve […]
Ian Shapira: A culture of control has Washington area campuses in an ever-tightening grip, many students say, extending beyond the long-standing restrictions on provocative clothing, cellphone use and class-time bathroom visits. Akin to the omnipresent “helicopter parents,” these students say, are helicopter administrators who home in on their smallest moves, no matter how guileless or […]
Doug Erickson on the 2007/2008 $345M budget (up from $333M in 2006/2007) for 24,342 students): As feared by some parents, the recommendations also included a plan to consolidate schools on the city’s East Side. Marquette Elementary students would move to Lapham Elementary and Sherman Middle School students would be split between O’Keeffe and Black Hawk […]
Art Rainwater on the reductions in increases to the proposed 2007-2008 MMSD Budget [1.4MB PDF]: Dear Board of Education, The attached is my recommendation for the service reductions required to balance the budget for 2007-2008. They are provided to you for review in advance of my Recommended Balanced Budget for 2007-2008 which will be available […]
Richard Medlin: Shyers (1992a, 1992b), in the most thorough study of home-schooled children’s social behavior to date, tested 70 children who had been entirely home-schooled and 70 children who had always attended traditional schools. The two groups were matched in age (all were 8-10 years old), race, gender, family size, socioeconomic status, and number and […]
Diana Jean Schemo has been at this article for awhile: The program, which gives $1 billion a year in grants to states, was supposed to end the so-called reading wars — the battle over the best method of teaching reading — but has instead opened a new and bitter front in the fight. According to […]
The We Energies Renewable Energy Development Program “2007 Wind and Solar Scholarship Program” Request for Applications March 5, 2007 Program Description We Energies supports the development of renewable energy technologies as part of a long-term strategy for providing low-cost, environmentally sound energy options to its customers. To help in furthering this objective, the “2007 Wind […]
James Barron: Rich Cronin, the president and chief executive of GSN, said he was not just thrilled to watch the competition, he was euphoric. “One person will be the ‘American Idol’ of vocabulary,” he said. (In the end, after an afternoon with its share of technical difficulties and dashed hopes, the winner was Robert Marsland, […]
The Madison West High School PTSO held a school board candidate forum Monday night. Topics included: Madison High School Comparison A candidate’s ability to listen, interact and work successfully with other board members Past and future referenda support Candidate views on the $333M+ budget for our 24,000 students Extensive conversations on the part of Marj […]
Danielle Repshas: “Still, there is not an absolute guarantee that a course [called] one thing someplace has the same rigor somewhere else,” Reason said. Part of the challenge is judging the standards of one AP class from another at different high schools, and Reason said the level of trust colleges and secondary schools have with […]
After listening to Phony Tony Casteneda’s ludicruous charaterizations of those who post on this blog, I remembered a post by Bill Keys on a listserve sponsored by Advocates for Madison Public Schools. Bill and Phony Tony used nearly the same language and divisiveness. Here’s Bill’s rant: FACTS? FACTS? FACTS? Do you really believe that those […]
March Madness is approaching! On the board level, madness can be characterized by the large assortments of topics and decisions that have been or will need to be made such as the superintendent search, budget, and other serious issues that require time, analysis and public discussion. I would like to give you a brief report […]
The Madison School Board voted down the proposed Studio Charter School Monday night in a 4-2 vote (Against: Carstensen, Kobza, Silveira and Winston; For Mathiak and Robarts with Vang away). Sparks flew when Lucy Mathiak asked Nancy Donahue about their interaction with the attempts to talk with principals and teachers about the proposed charter school […]
Teacher Voices: In Philadelphia last week a teacher named Frank Burd, wound up in the hospital after two students assaulted him, apparently because he had confiscated an iPod during class. After class, according to a report on NBC news, the two students were waiting for Burd. One punched him and the other pushed him. As […]
Jason Shephard: Suzanne Fatupaito, a nurse’s assistant in Madison schools, is fed up with Wisconsin Physicians Service, the preferred health insurance provider of Madison Teachers Inc. “MTI uses scare tactics” to maintain teacher support for WPS, Fatupaito recently wrote to the school board. “If members knew that another insurance [plan] would offer similar services to […]
It will be interesting to see how voters on February 20 and April 3 view this decision by a majority of the Madison School Board: Should the Board and Administration continue to give away their ability to negotiate health care benefits ($43.5M of the 2006/2007 budge) before MTI union bargaining begins? Read the 2005 MMSD/MTI […]
Chris Gallagher THE EDUCATION report card for my home state of Nebraska in the spring of 1999 was mixed, according to Education Week. While children in the state ranked among the top 10 nationally in most academic categories, Nebraska nonetheless garnered only a C. Why? Largely because it does not administer statewide, standardized assessments and […]
Educational Testing Service: A report from ETS’s Policy Information Center, America’s Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation’s Future, looks at the convergence of three powerful sociological and economical forces that are changing our nation’s future: substantial disparities in skill levels (reading and math) seismic economic changes (widening wage gaps) sweeping demographic shifts (less education, […]
Steven Malanga: In football, a quarterback’s blind side is the side of the field opposite his throwing arm—the left side of the field for a right-handed quarterback, for instance. One shouldn’t confuse the blind side with a blind spot, which is what our policy-makers and media often have when discussing American poverty: it is a […]
Up close, the author finds that politics obscure key educational issues Marc Eisen: Where’s the challenge? I’m no different. I want my kids pushed, prodded, inspired, and challenged in school. Too often—in the name of equity, or progressive education, or union protectionism, or just plain cheapness—that isn’t happening in the Madison schools. Advanced classes are […]
Po Bronson: But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when […]
John Nichols noted that Madison’s Mayoral challengers have not raised substantive questions of the incumbent Mayor’s (Dave Cieslewicz) record, including schools: No. 2, he has failed to offer much in the way of a vision for how this rapidly changing city should approach the future. How green should it be? Where does mass transit fit […]
I’ve updated the election page with the following information: January, 2007 campaign finance filings which show that retired Madison Teacher and seat 5 candidate Marj Passman (who faces Maya Cole – $135.00) has raised $5,530, far ahead of the rest. Beth Moss is next at $822.00 (Moss faces Pam Cross-Leone – $75.00 and Rick Thomas […]
School closings need to be considered in light of the long-term (5-10 years or more) outlook – a 3-5 year outlook, yet alone 1-2 years, is not nearly long enough when considering a measure whose impact lasts for many years, at a student/family level, as well as financial. What muddies this school closing picture is […]
Over the past week, I have had several heartfelt e-mails from residents of the Lapham-Marquette neighborhood, urging me and other board members to oppose closing Lapham School. To put the e-mails in context, let us all remember that there are MANY proposals out there because EVERYTHING is on the table thanks to the $10 million […]
A story by Sol Stern posted on City Journal highlights the success of Reading First and includes striking parallels to our superintendent’s response to the program: Reading First, though much maligned, succeeds in teaching kids to read. . . . A comprehensive study by an outside evaluator will appear in 2007, measuring Reading First’s influence […]
Marc Fisher: Somehow, when good, bright people get serious about the fact that thousands of children emerge from this city’s schools year after year without knowing how to read well enough to get a decent job, those good people end up busying themselves with little boxes on a piece of paper. Both say the schools […]
From a reader involved in these issues, by Kerry Hill: Demystifying math: UW-Madison scholars maintain focus on effective teaching, learning Tuesday, January 30, 2007 – By Kerry Hill New generation of Math Ed Many people still see mathematics as a difficult subject that only a select group of students with special abilities can master. Learning […]
Teacher Thomas Biel: Juan/Sean/John doesn’t read too well because we don’t teach him how very well. Results from the 2005-’06 Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations show that 55% of Milwaukee Public Schools 10th-graders do not read at a proficient level. The majority of our kids have reading problems. Leaders in the school district, in the […]
School spending has always been a puzzle, both from a state and federal government perspective as well as local property taxpayers. In an effort to shed some light on the vagaries of K-12 finance, I’ve summarized below a number of local, state and federal articles and links. The 2007 Statistical Abstract offers a great deal […]
Maria Newman: Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York said today that he would allocate more money to the state’s public education system in his 2008 budget proposal, but he said the increased spending would be tied to better results from schools, educators and students. “There will be no more excuses for failure,” Mr. Spitzer said. […]
Jay Matthews: In the midst of a national debate over whether Advanced Placement courses place too much pressure on U.S. high school students, a team of Texas researchers has concluded that the difficult courses and three-hour exams are worth it. In the largest study ever of the impact of AP on college success, which looked […]
What does it take to truly create a school where no child is left behind? That question defines what is probably the most pressing issue facing American public education, and a high-poverty school on Madison’s north side west of Warner Park seems to have figured out some of the answers. Mendota Elementary is among a […]
The Madison Board of Education is faced with several great challenges over the next few months. One of the biggest is the announcement that Superintendent Art Rainwater will retire at the end of the June 2008. The board will be working with a consultant to assist in hiring the next superintendent. Another board challenge is […]
Sherrilyn Ifill: was recently trying to list the 10 most encouraging initiatives by black people in 2006 and I thought I’d share one with you. It’s the Baltimore Algebra Project, a group of African American inner-city teens who’ve evolved from tutors to activists in an effort to force change in the failing Baltimore City School […]
Mark Hicks: The reorganization is part of the district’s controversial plan to shutter 47 schools this summer and five more during summer 2008 in a bid to save $19 million. The struggling district lost nearly 12,600 students last fall after a teachers strike, and more than 50,000 have left in the last eight years. The […]
Tom Moore: IN the past year or so I have seen Matthew Perry drink 30 cartons of milk, Ted Danson explain the difference between a rook and a pawn, and Hilary Swank remind us that white teachers still can’t dance or jive talk. In other words, I have been confronted by distorted images of my […]
Charles Murray posted three articles this week on Education and Intelligence, a series that generated some conversation around the net: Intelligence in the Classroom: Our ability to improve the academic accomplishment of students in the lower half of the distribution of intelligence is severely limited. It is a matter of ceilings. Suppose a girl in […]
I am pleased to invite you to a conference on “Education and Educational Research in an Era of Accountability: Insights and Blind Spots“, to be held on February 7-8, 2007, at the Pyle Center [map], near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Attendance is free, and we very much hope that members of the local educational […]
Channel3000.com: Some Madison community members are circulating a petition to put forward a candidate to be La Follette High School’s next principal. That name is Joe Gothard, who is the former dean of students at La Follette and currently serves as principal at Akira Toki Middle School, WISC-TV reported. Questions about who would lead the […]
Ted Widerski: The Talented and Gifted Division of MMSD is busy organizing ‘MathFests’ for strong math students in grades 4 – 8. These events are planned to provide an opportunity for students to interact with other students across the city who share a passion for challenging mathematics. Many of these students study math either online, […]
On a sunny September morning in 2005 Preston Hollow Elementary School hosted Bike to School Day. Dozens of grinning children with fair skin played and talked outside in the courtyard, relaxing happily after rides through their North Dallas neighborhood of garish mansions and stately brick homes. Parents shared tea and fruit, capturing the smiles of […]
In a guest editorial in The Capital Times on January 10, 2007, MTI leader John Matthews explains that Madison school superintendent Art Rainwater unveiled his plan to resign at the end of 2007-08 to the teachers union leader long before he told the Madison Board of Education in an executive session on Monday, January 8, […]
Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater’s recent public announcement that he plans to retire in 2008 presents an opportunity to look back at previous searches as well as the K-12 climate during those events. Fortunately, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web, we can quickly lookup information from the recent past. The Madison School District’s two most […]
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial: Wisconsin’s state government ended the past fiscal year with a giant deficit of $2.15 billion, according to the accounting methods used by most businesses. But the state’s books show a cozy balance of $49.2 million. The discrepancy results from years of Wisconsin governors and legislators manipulating the accounting process to hide […]
The Madison School Board Communication Committee’s upcoming meeting includes an interesting 2007-2009 legislative agenda for state education finance changes that would increase District annual spending (current budget is $333,000,000) at a higher than normal rate (typically in the 3.8% range): 4. 2007-09 Legislative Agenda a. Work to create a school finance system that defines that […]
Daniel de Vise: Not every student at Bannockburn is above average. But 70 percent of the third-grade class has been identified as gifted, based on tests and other academic indicators. The school serves one of the largest concentrations in the region of students capable of working beyond their assigned grade, sometimes well beyond. “We’re constantly […]
Jay Matthews: The American Montessori Society, based in New York, reported 7 percent membership growth in just the past year, and many of the schools are getting ready to celebrate the centennial of the Montessori beachhead. Once considered a maverick experiment that appealed only to middle-class white families in the States, Montessori schools have become […]
A reader involved in these issues emailed this article by Andrew Rotherham: Second, the story highlights my colleague Tom Toch’s criticism that a lot of tests states are using under NCLB are pretty basic. That’s exactly right. I’m all for better tests, but isn’t that, you know, an indictment of schools that can’t even get […]
Jason Shephard: From the beginning, Mary Watson Peterson had doubts about the motivations of those in charge of implementing federal education grants known as Reading First. As the Madison district’s coordinator of language arts and reading, she spent hundreds of hours working on Madison’s Reading First grant proposal. “Right away,” she says, “I recognized a […]
Amy Hetzner: Under the model, used by a number of school boards in the state, the board develops a set of expectations and then holds its administrators accountable to achieve those goals and report on progress. The result is a more focused board that has more objective criteria for evaluating the performance of the school […]
Watch Monday evening’s school board discussion [Video | Download] of the upcoming larger than usual reductions in revenue cap limited increases in the District’s 2007 – 2008 budget (they are larger than normal due to the recently disclosed 7 year structural budget deficit). The 2006 / 2007 budget is $333M+ (it was $245M in 98/99 […]
Brian Lee and Jared Cunningham: By applying GIS analysis, University of Kentucky undergraduate landscape architecture students have found ways to make it safer and easier for children to walk to school. Concerns with the growing childhood obesity epidemic, increased costs in driving children to school, and fostering the perception that it is more normal to […]
Susan Troller’s piece today on the larger than usual reduction in “revenue cap limited” increases (say that quickly) in the Madison School District’s $332M+ 2007/2008 budget is interesting, from my perspective, due to what is left unsaid: The District has been running a “structural deficit for years, revealed only recently after school board Vice President […]
Janet Mertz recently mentioned (along with UW Placement’s James Wollack recently) this paper by Richard Hill & Thomas Parker [750K PDF]: The latest, December 2006 issue of the American Mathematical Monthly, an official publication of the Mathematical Association of America, contains an 18-page article entitled “A study of Core-Plus students attending Michigan State University” by […]
Madison School Board President Johnny Winston, Jr. (thanks!) posted a rather remarkable summary of recent activity today. I thought it would be useful to recall recent Board Majority inaction when reviewing Johnny’s words: It’s remarkable to consider that just a few short years ago, substantive issues were simply not discussed by the School Board, such […]
Happy Holidays to everyone! Despite the cold weather, the Madison Board of Education continues its work.
Adam Liptak: But, as an extraordinary two-hour Supreme Court argument last week demonstrated, the meaning and legacy of Brown remain up for grabs. The court was considering whether school systems in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., could take account of students’ races to ensure racial balance. During the argument, two sets of justices managed, with equal […]
I have a few questions for Barb and the other members of MPIE. I hope one or more of them will take the time to answer. As I look over the course catalogs for the four high schools, I see that each school has both a Special Education Department and an English as a Second […]
As Arlene has reached out to the community for suggestions about the Redesign of the high schools, let me share a couple of thoughts: It’s too late. The students that are behind in 5th grade rarely catch up. The 2/3 combinations are by far the worst academic combination for elementary students, yet we continue this […]
The arrival of local property tax bills signal the onset of tax season. Accordingly, there has been a number of recent articles on Wisconsin’s tax climate: Barbara Miner: More than 16,000 private properties in Wisconsin pay no property taxes. As a result, everyone else pays more. Why? In Milwaukee, for instance, almost 20 percent of […]
Superintendent Rainwater and I engaged in a lengthy series of e-mails when I questioned the truth of a statment in a letter he wrote to Wisconsin congressmen to seek their help in reinstating the MMSD’s eligibility for funds from Reading First. In his letter the superintendent said that the MMSD was told “we had to […]
Daniel Golden: In 2004, after the district scrapped race as a factor in assignments because of the legal threat, another group of white parents from the same neighborhood got upset when their children were passed over at the same majority-white school, Ballard High. They were left out not because of race, but because they didn’t […]
In light of recent events regarding curriculum and other issues in our high schools, there has been a small step in the right direction at West HS. Superintendent Rainwater announced at our 11/29 MUAE meeting that he has been in discussion with West HS Principal Ed Holmes about providing West 9th and 10th graders who […]
Joanne Jacobs: Last night at the Hunt Institute retreat for North Carolina legislators, the former governor, Jim Hunt, handed out copies he’d underlined to everyone there, urging the legislators to “read every word.” Schools like KIPP and Amistad [Clusty on Amistad] that succeed in educating low-income students tend to do three things well, Education Gadfly […]
National Institute of Mental Health: The first long-term, large-scale study designed to determine the safety and effectiveness of treating preschoolers who have attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with methylphenidate (Ritalin) has found that overall, low doses of this medication are effective and safe. However, the study found that children this age are more sensitive than older […]
Arnold Kling: The incumbent policy is more of the same. Both parties in Washington champion more government involvement in primary education and more subsidies for existing colleges and universities. The innovative policy is to support any alternative to our current education system. Ultimately, we would trust consumers to keep the best alternatives and discard the […]
If Jason Shepard is correct, West will stay as is during the review process, heterogeneous classes is the goal and the study committee will not include parents or teachers.
If the BOE doesn’t step in right now, it’s all over. I hadn’t quite understood what Ed Blume has been writing about here structurally as much as I do at this moment. This process will be driven to Rainwater’s foregone conclusions. The BOE must frame the questions and decide who is on this committee. And if it’s truly a tabula rasa, let’s put West on the same footing as East, that is, undo the changes the Rainwater administration shoved through.
The prime motivator for taking MMSD’s high schools from an academically rich curriculum to the one-room schoolhouse model has been to close the minority achievement gap. Thus, I read with interest the following NYTimes letters: A Racial Gap, or an Income Gap? (7 Letters) Published: November 24, 2006 To the Editor: In emphasizing race-based achievement […]
Wikipedia | US Census Bureau A quick note to thank the Madison School Board (Johnny Winston, Jr., President; Lawrie Kobza, Vice President; Carol Carstensen, Treasurer; Shwaw Vang, Clerk; Lucy Mathiak, Ruth Robarts and Arlene Silveira) for publicly discussing and addressing a number of issues this year: The Superintendent’s Review (something that was not done for […]
On Monday, November 27, the Madison School Board will begin to address rumors about major changes coming to our high schools. There are some realities behind the rumors. For example, West High School substantially reduced the English courses for tenth graders this year. The principal at East High School met with parents last week. He […]
The Madison School Board has given Superintendent Art Rainwater a set of specific orders to accomplish in the coming year, including several directives to take an in-depth look at the district’s entire math curriculum. In the past several years, area math educators have expressed concern about the effectiveness of the Madison district’s reliance on a […]
The October 30, 2006 Board of Education met to discuss a series of resolutions, and approve the final 2006-07 MMSD Budget, and approve the AFSCME Local 60 contract. The video of the meeting is 210MB, and 2 hours and 30 minutes long. Click on the image at left to watch the video. The video contains […]
Academic Blend, a 100% Fair Trade Coffee. An insurgent fundraising idea from Thoreau Elementary School’s activist parents. 4 flavors (check out the eyes), $10/pound. Email Rosana Ellman (rellmann@charter.net) to order. Add your interesting fund raising ideas to this post via the comments. The recently revealed Madison School District’s $6M structural deficit (slightly less than 2% […]
State gifted education advocate and Madison attorney Todd Palmer recently filed a request for a judicial “summary judgement” in the matter of “Todd Palmer v. The State of Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and Elizabeth Burmaster.” As he explained it to me in layperson’s terms, a summary judgment “is a procedure wherein a party (me) […]
Channel3000: Two Madison West High School students have been suspended and are facing criminal charges after allegedly creating a bomb scare twice — once on Monday and on Halloween. A 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl allegedly just wanted to play a practical joke, but the school’s officials said they don’t think it’s a laughing […]
Lynn Thompson: But they strongly believe that their math textbooks should include actual math. Donald’s “Connected Mathematics” book at Harbour Pointe Middle School in Mukilteo asks him to arrange a list of 20 cities in order of their populations, all in the tens of millions. Yes, he concedes, he must recognize differences among numbers, but […]
Donna Gordon Blankinship: Gates said the experience of being a parent of three kids – ages 10, 7 and 4 – has led him to spend more time thinking about schools. Specifically, he said the U.S. education system needs higher standards, clear accountability, flexible personnel practices and innovation. Gates, whose children are in private schools, […]
Dan Benson: The proposed tax rate, however, is $1.83 per $1,000 of equalized value, down from $1.97 this year. That means the owner of a $250,000 house would save about $35 on the tax bill from the previous year. “(Vrakas) is calling it a tax decrease because the impact on some homeowners is that their […]
A story by Susan Troller in the Cap Times reports: Two elementary schools at opposite ends of the Madison Metropolitan School District are bursting at the seams and may face boundary changes next year to deal with crowding. Lake View Elementary on the northeast side of the city and Chavez Elementary on the southwest side […]
Susan Black: In many classrooms, science textbooks add to children’s misconceptions. William Beaty, an engineer who designed an electricity exhibit for the Boston Museum of Science, discovered “a morass of misconceptions, mistakes, and misinformation” in grade school science textbooks. In fact, he couldn’t find a single book that explained basic electricity correctly. North Carolina State […]
David Klein: Problem: Find the slope and y-intercept of the equation 10 = x – 2.5. Solution: The equation 10 = x – 2.5 is a specific case of the equation y = x – 2.5, which has a slope of 1 and a y-intercept of –2.5. This problem comes from a 7th grade math […]
Jason Shephard: One of the better-kept secrets in Madison is that the school district currently offers more than 100 online courses for city high school students. The program is called the Madison Virtual Campus. “It turns out Madison is a leader in this technology,” says Johnny Winston Jr., the school board president. “My first question […]
I would like to thank our community for their passage of the referendum on November 7th. This referendum will build a new school in Linden Park, finance the cafeteria and remodeling of Leopold Elementary and refinance existing debt…
From a reader: Address 201 South Gammon Road (Memorial High School) Arrested person/suspect 1. Jacquelyn L. Lightfoot, 37-year-old female of Madison (Charges –Disorderly Conduct 947.01, Resisting/Obstructing A Police Officer 946.41) 2. 14-year-old female (10th grade Memorial HS Student) of Madison (Charges – Disorderly Conduct 947.01, Resisting/Obstructing A Police Officer 946.41) 3. 15-year-old female (9th grade […]
Jay Matthews: I am collecting the Challenge Index data now. The early returns indicate our local schools will set a record for the number of AP and IB tests being given. In fact, there appears to be no other region in the country that has as high a level of participation in college-level courses and […]
Jay Matthews: It is election day — a good day, I think, to thank God for our freedoms and for finally relieving us of the pain of listening to all those annoying campaign commercials. I watch and listen to them anyway, even the worst of them. I am a political news junkie and always find […]
Brett posts his thoughts on the book”Reclaiming Public Education by Reclaiming Our Democracy: As with his last book, Mathews offers a great deal of evidence as to the roots and the current state of the issues preventing community engagement. It’s a challenge that’s been more than a century in the making: when the idea of […]
Cynthia Crossen writing in “Deja vu” on Taylor, whose ideas continue to this day in the education world (among others): “You have been quarreling because there have been no proper standards for a day’s work,” Mr. Taylor chided bosses. “You do not know what a proper day’s work is. We make a bluff at it […]
The Department of Public Instruction has announced the availability of grant funding through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, funded under the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Funds may be used to build or expand after school programs that provide academic enrichment in reading and math, as well as other youth development and […]
On November 7th, voters will be asked to approve a referendum allowing the Madison Metropolitan School District to build a new school and exceed its revenue cap. After very careful consideration, the Board of Education unanimously decided to ask the question. I fully support this referendum and urge you to vote yes. Our community is […]
There were some interesting items in today’s conversation between Don Severson and Vicki Mckenna [13.7MB mp3 audio file]: A caller (29 minutes): “Why does the rest of the media have such complacency with the Schools?” Don noted the lack of negative aids discussion in Monday’s “very long” Wisconsin State Journal article. The caller raised a […]
Jay Matthews: But at Scarsdale High, my son was told he could not get into the course unless he did well on an entrance test given to every prospective AP U.S. history student. He passed the test, got into the course and did well, as I expected. That was not my problem. What bothered me […]
This is one of the best things I read recently on support for public education. TJM Jacob Stockinger: A ‘yes’ vote for schools ensures a better future By Jacob Stockinger There is a lot I don’t know about my parents. But I do know this: They would never have voted no on a school referendum. […]
With all of the talk about the district’s high schools going through a redesign process (similar to what the middle schools did last summer), I think it’s important that as many interested people as possible attend the East High United meeting at 7 p.m. on Nov. 9 at East High School [map/directions]. I recently asked […]
As a senior adviser and former president of Public Agenda, I’m often asked to interpret public-opinion research in relation to the priorities of major education groups. These groups are seeking information that can help them refine their “messaging” strategies to promote a particular agenda. “Messaging,” when it assumes that the solution is a given, merely […]