Hamilton Nolan:

There is nothing that the public (you, and me, inclusive) loves to do more than to complain about the cheap, unserious nature of the media, while also being the cause of that. “The press should be writing about serious issues—not this celebrity garbage and lifestyle fluff and ginned-up controversies,” the public often says. Then you look at the numbers. Nobody reads the serious stories and everyone reads the fluff. The most you can hope for is that publications will be enlightened enough to use the garbage to enable the good reporting. And indeed, that’s how it is. The Iraq bureau is paid for by the Styles section. The public, generally speaking, gets what it wants, even if they don’t admit it. 

There are nuances to this though. Sometimes, the public wants something—local news, for example—but they can’t have it because the economic model that delivered it is broken, and nobody has come up with a new one that works yet. When every newspaper amounted to a local advertising monopoly with huge profit margins, as was the case for most of the 20th century, there was a lot of local news coverage, because the publications in each city were rich. Then the internet came around and huge tech platforms diverted most of the ad money into their own pockets and local newspapers saw their revenue dry up and now, there is little local news. It’s a journalism problem, and a civic problem, caused by an economic problem. (The solution to this is to either tax tech companies to fund journalism or just have the government fund journalism directly. That is not exactly the subject of this post, though.) 

Ever since the internet smashed print media and Google and Facebook et al smashed the economic model for online media, we’ve all been caught in a period of casting-about. Entrepreneurs and media thinkers cast about for ideas of how to fix the broken model, and then they cast about for funders to give them the money to try it. The production of journalism in America depends to a remarkable degree on fooling rich people into thinking it’s a good idea to fund some publication, and then feverishly publishing as much stuff as possible before the rich person figures out that journalism is not a good investment. 

An unfortunate consequence of this, though, is the profusion of publications designed from the ground up to appeal to the demographic of “business people who incorrectly imagine themselves to be ideas people.” That’s who the funders are, and to get the funding the funders need to like the pitch. This sort of publication can hire great journalists and can do good reporting, but its reporting must be forced into an execrable Powerpoint-style package in order to catch the eye of media investors whose brains, after years of abuse by capital, are unable to process anything more languorous than a pitch deck. Say what you will about Gawker (dead) and Buzzfeed (dying) and Vice (bankrupt), but the era of online media defined by those companies was full of all types of whimsy and radicalism that was the downstream effect of a wave of money that fueled the hiring of thousands of young writers and gave them unprecedented freedom. (The freedom was purely due to the fact that tons of content had to be produced to fill the maw of the internet. Any socially redeeming qualities were a side benefit.)

The Madison School District recently published a brief K-12 enrollment history (2010- PDF) along with a look at school capacities (PDF).

Happily, a similar 2009 document is available here (PDF). This document includes 18 years of history, to 1990.

Yet, the District and community have long tolerated wide variation in demographics across the schools.

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I found it interesting that a number of schools are well below capacity. Cherokee middle school is at 74% of capacity while nearby Hamilton is at 106%. Hamilton’s free and reduced lunch population is just 18% while Cherokee’s is 60% (!) Details.

The District is planning to raise property taxes via a spring, 2015 referendum. Said referendum, if passed would expand Hamilton Middle School (“four additional classrooms”), among others. This is quite remarkable with available capacity at nearby Cherokee.

Alvin Chang:

Think about your elementary school. 

If you attended an American public school, chances are you went to that school because your family lived in that school’s attendance zone. You probably didn’t think twice about it.

We tend to assume these are neutrally drawn, immutable borders. But if you take a step back and look at the demographics of who lives in each attendance zone, you’re faced with maps like this.

Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools, despite space in nearby facilities.

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Madison School District 4MB PDF:.

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Related: Madison has long tolerated a very wide range in school diversity:

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Notes and links on wide variation in school diversity.

Madison School District 600K PDF:

July 1 Equalization Aid estimate was $4.8 million less than budget. Before any cost cutting, the November 2014 tax levy estimate would change from a 1.99% increase to a 3.86% increase.

However, the November 2014 tax base estimate has also changed from a 0.0% increase to a 3.5% increase. This was based on the City of Madison assessed data released in April 2014

The tax rate, which estimates the tax impact on the average value home, was presented in the Budget Proposal as increasing from $11.86 (per $1,000) to $12.11 (per $1,000) or an estimated $57.88 increase on the property tax bill of an average value home.

The tax rate estimate has been revised to $11.91 (per $1,000), or an estimated $11.55 increase on the property tax bill of an average value home.

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Might Low income student distribution be addressed?

Madison has long supported a wide variation in school demographics. The chart above, created from 2013-2014 Madison School District middle school demographic data, illustrates the present reality, with the largest middle school – near west side Hamilton – also featuring the smallest percentage low income population.

Much more on Madison’s 2014-2015 402M budget, here.

My simple thoughts on Madison’s latest Superintendent, Jennifer Cheatham:

How is the new Superintendent Doing?

Our community faces several historic challenges:

Despite spending double the national average per student, Madison’s reading results are a disaster. The Superintendent has been talking about this and there are indications that at least administrative attention to this urgent problem has changed.

Perhaps the most significant challenge our community faces is that school districts largely remain as they were a century ago: doing the same thing over and over yet becoming more costly each year. The rest of the world is obviously not standing still (www.wisconsin2.org)

The organizational stasis continues despite:

A. The information revolution:
I had dinner with some college students recently. All bright and motivated, they mentioned using the Khan Academy and many other online resources to learn. Sometimes supplementing coursework and in other cases replacing inadequate classroom lectures.

B. A few public schools are re-thinking their models:
Some Wisconsin Public schools are moving toward year around schedules:

Madison, meanwhile, seems largely content with the status quo:

C. Substantial growth in property taxes over the years, despite big changes in homeownership trends, demographics (rental growth) and the local economy.

https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2013/06/09/madison_schools_89/

http://www.waxingamerica.com/2006/02/nineteen_financ.html

D. Michael Barry (the Madison School District’s Business Services Director) recently confirmed to me via email that 25% of the District’s 2014-2015 budget is spent on benefits (!)

Those trends will be very difficult to address within the current structure.

In summary: two big challenges: disastrous reading problems and an organization structure created for 1914.

It is too early to tell how things are going, though the District could certainly share reading results throughout the most recent school year, via its test results.

The interested reader would do well to review previous Superintendent coverage before, during and after. It is revealing. Pat Schneider takes a quick survey, here.

Henry Whitehead:

Dear Editor: While I bet much of sleepy Madison loved your article on new super-intendent Jennifer Cheatham, I found it both revolting and a perfect microcosm for the extreme flaws in the way we talk about student issues in Madison. The Madison School District and local media refuse to ever put the focus of these types of conversations on students. “Locals,” to you, means 11 bureaucrats and one graduated student. I have no interest in hearing from self-serving members of various boards and committees.

What I want, and what I never get, is testimonies from actual kids in the district who are struggling, who have had a problem during their K-12 years, and who could be better served by the Madison School District. I want to hear from a kid whose only meal comes at school, telling me the actual truth about whether their situation has improved or worsened, not 12 nearly identical, nondescriptive praises by adults. Put the focus where it belongs.

Nikole Hannah-Jones:

Though James Dent could watch Central High School’s homecoming parade from the porch of his faded white bungalow, it had been years since he’d bothered. But last fall, Dent’s oldest granddaughter, D’Leisha, was vying for homecoming queen, and he knew she’d be poking up through the sunroof of her mother’s car, hand cupped in a beauty-pageant wave, looking for him.

So, at about 4:30 in the afternoon on October 18, Dent, age 64, made his way off the porch and to the curb along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the West End of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Soon he could hear the first rumblings of the band.

There was a time, little more than a decade ago, when the Central High School homecoming parade brought out the city. The parade started in the former state capital’s lively downtown and seemed to go on for miles. The horns of one of the state’s largest marching bands, some 150 members strong, would bounce off the antebellum mansions along the streets. Revelers—young and old, black and white, old money and no money—crowded the sidewalks to watch the elaborate floats and cheer a football team feared across the region.

Central was not just a renowned local high school. It was one of the South’s signature integration success stories. In 1979, a federal judge had ordered the merger of the city’s two largely segregated high schools into one. The move was clumsy and unpopular, but its consequences were profound. Within a few years, Central emerged as a powerhouse that snatched up National Merit Scholarships and math-competition victories just as readily as it won trophies in football, track, golf. James Dent’s daughter Melissa graduated from Central in 1988, during its heyday, and went on to become the first in her family to graduate from college.

But on that sunlit day last October, as Dent searched for Melissa’s daughter in the procession coming into view, he saw little to remind him of that era. More caravan than parade, Central’s homecoming pageant consisted of a wobbly group of about 30 band members, some marching children from the nearby black elementary schools, and a dozen or so cars with handwritten signs attached to their sides. The route began in the predominantly black West End and ended a few blocks later, just short of the railroad tracks that divide that community from the rest of the city.

More: Share Six Words on Race & Education.

Related: Madison has long supported a wide variation in school demographics. The chart above, created from 2013-2014 Madison School District middle school demographic data, illustrates the present reality, with the largest middle school – near west side Hamilton – also featuring the smallest percentage (18.3%) low income population. Nearby Cherokee Middle School’s low income population exceeds 60%!

Chris Rickert:

One advantage to redrawing the lines is that it could delay the financial hit of having to build a new school. Some school officials are already talking referendum. Plus, with space available in the district, is there really any good reason any student should be forced to attend class in what was formerly a closet, as some at Sandburg Elementary do?
More troubling is the effect crowding could have on low-income students who, statistically at least, struggle academically and might benefit from better learning environments.
According to data collected by the Department of Public Instruction, 48.9 percent of Madison elementary students were considered “economically disadvantaged” last school year. For the five schools over capacity now, that percentage was 48.4.
But two of those schools are more affluent and are expected to see their enrollments drop below 100 percent capacity by 2018-19. Most of the seven schools expected to be over capacity in 2018-19 serve less affluent areas of Madison, and collectively, the seven had a student population that was 57.8 percent economically disadvantaged last year.

Madison has long supported a wide variation in school demographics. The chart above, created from 2013-2014 Madison School District middle school demographic data, illustrates the present reality, with the largest middle school – near west side Hamilton – also featuring the smallest percentage low income population.

Molly Beck:

Board member T.J. Mertz said that sometime in the next six or seven months the board will begin a process of seriously looking at facilities issues, including whether to embark upon the contentious fix of changing any of the district’s school boundaries, among other solutions.
“In multiple areas we’re either at or will be very, very soon at or over capacity, and we continue to have schools that are fairly well under capacity,” Mertz said. “There’s going to have to be something done … and I’m of the get-started-with-this-sooner-rather-than-later school.”

Related: We have seen this movie before. 10 Reasons to Combine Lapham & Marquette.
The Myth of Public Schools

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Madison has long supported a wide variation in school demographics. The chart above, created from 2013-2014 Madison School District middle school demographic data, illustrates the present reality, with the largest middle school – near west side Hamilton – also featuring the smallest percentage low income population.

Matthew Yglesias:

This disturbing article about a rich neighborhood of Baton Rouge, La., that wants to secede so it won’t have to share school funding with poorer neighborhoods reminds me of one of my great frustrations with the K-12 education policy debate–the terminology of “public schools.”
The way the word is used a school is “public” if it is owned by a government entity and thus part of the public sector. But a public school is by no means a school that’s open to the public in the sense that anyone can go there. Here in the District of Columbia anyone who wants to wander into a public park is free to do so (that’s what makes it public) but to send your kid to a good “public” elementary school in Ward 3 you have to live there. And thanks to exclusionary zoning, in practice if you want to live in Ward 3 you have to be rich. It wouldn’t be legal to respond to the very high price of land in the area by building homes on small lots, or building tall buildings full of small affordable apartments.
Since D.C. doesn’t have Louisiana’s political culture, Ward 3 generally doesn’t have a problem with its tax dollars subsidizing the schools in Wards 5, 7, and 8, but if you proposed randomly assigning students to schools to produce integrated instructional environments, you’d have an epic battle on your hands.

Madison has long supported a wide variation in school demographics. The chart above, created from 2013-2014 Madison School District middle school demographic data, illustrates the present reality, with the largest middle school – near west side Hamilton – also featuring the smallest percentage low income population.