Alan Borsuk: Mississippi got a lot of attention when the NAEP scores were released. It was the only state where fourth grade reading scores improved. Mississippi is implementing a strong requirement that teachers be well-trained in reading instruction. Massachusetts did that in the 1990s and it paid off in the following decade. Wisconsin passed a … Continue reading Teacher Mulligans, continued: The latest report on reading was really bad. Here are some possible solutions →

Will Flanders: While DPI is willing to acknowledge the gravity of the achievement gap, the agency remains stubbornly opposed to proven solutions. Year after year and study after study reveal that public charter schools, freed from the mandates of bureaucracy and unionization, do a better job educating exactly the type of students that need the … Continue reading The price of teacher Mulligans, continued: Wisconsin Proficiency Rates Flat Despite Spending Increases →

It’s #NAEPday. Data dive done already. (Wisconsin has reclaimed its place at the top for lowest average scale scores in reading for its 4th and 8th grade black students.) Now to observe where the robust convos are vs. where crickets will be chirping. https://t.co/0qCSwtylFu — Chan Stroman (@eduphilia) October 30, 2019 . Despite continuous attacks … Continue reading The Price of Wisconsin’s Elementary Reading Teacher Mulligans →

Wisconsin’s new Governor, Democrat Tony Evers, recently acknowledged his support for thousands of elementary reading teacher content knowledge exam mulligans. Now comes Politifact: As proof, Thiesfeldt’s staff pointed to the most recent Wisconsin Student Assessment System results. The annual tests include the Forward Exam for grades three to eight and ACT-related tests for grades nine … Continue reading Politifact joins the Wisconsin Reading mulligan party →

Wiseye @ 24 September WisPolitics Lunch: Jim Zellmer: Thank you for your service Governor Evers. Under your leadership, the Wisconsin d.p.i. granted Mulligan’s to thousands of elementary teachers who couldn’t pass a reading exam (that’s the “Foundations of Reading” elementary teacher reading content knowledge exam), yet our students lag Alabama, a state that spends less … Continue reading My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results →

Logan Wroge: For example, white students in fifth grade dropped 4.6 percentage points in English/language arts proficiency compared to a 1.6 percentage-point decrease for black students in fifth grade. In the eighth grade, the percentage of African American students scoring proficient or advanced in English/language arts rose 2 percentage points to 12.1%, while the percentage … Continue reading Wisconsin Academic Result commentary: writer fails to mention thousands of DPI eLementary Reading teacher mulligans →

Scott Bellile: The state superintendent – first Evers, until he was elected governor in 2018, then his successor, Carolyn Stanford Taylor – and the DPI argued the governor’s approval on scopes is unnecessary because no state officer can act as the state superintendent’s superior with regard to the supervision of public instruction. In last week’s … Continue reading Commentary on Wisconsin DPI “Rule Making” and mulligans →

Molly Beck: Tuesday’s decision overturns the court’s own ruling just three years ago when a split panel of justices said in Coyne v. Walker that Evers could write rules and regulations related to education policy on his own — without permission from then-Gov. Scott Walker and the Legislature — because the state constitution provides him with … Continue reading “Rule Making”, achievement, adult employment, mulligans and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction →

Albuquerque Journal: Instead, teachers will be graded with classroom observations worth 50%; planning, preparation and professionalism worth 40%; and family and student surveys worth 10%. Student improvement on tests had accounted for 35 percent. So this year – and likely every year of this administration, don’t be fooled by the “transition” in the evaluation name … Continue reading New Mexico strips accountability from teacher evaluations; teacher mulligans redux →

Michelle Obama: Without telling me, she went over to the school and began a weeks-long process of behind-the-scenes lobbying, which led to me and a couple of other high-performing kids getting quietly pulled out of class, given a battery of tests, and about a week later reinstalled permanently into a bright and orderly third-grade class … Continue reading The Price of Teacher Mulligans: “I didn’t stop to ask myself then what would happen to all the kids who’d been left in the basement with the teacher who couldn’t teach” – Michelle Obama →

Wisconsin Reading Coalition: A bill is circulating in both houses of the Wisconsin legislature that would permanently exempt special education teachers from having to pass the Foundations of Reading Test (FORT). Prospective special educators would merely have to take one course in reading and reading comprehension, receive some unspecified coaching, and compile a portfolio. There … Continue reading Mulligans for Elementary Reading Teachers; permanent exemption proposal →

Negassi Tesfamichael: Gov. Evers had been at DPI for a while until now. Has there been a foundation at DPI built by Gov. Evers that you feel like you can expand upon? Initially, I went to DPI in 2001 — that was when Libby Burmaster became superintendent. And Libby and I worked together in the … Continue reading Commentary on Wisconsin DPI Leadership; Elementary Teacher Mulligans →

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction “DPI”, lead for many years by new Governor Tony Evers, has waived thousands of elementary reading teacher content knowledge requirements. This, despite our long term, disastrous reading results. Chan Stroman tracks the frequent Foundations of Reading (FoRT) mulligans: Yet the statutory FoRT requirement is now deemed satisfied by “attempts” … Continue reading Mulligans for Wisconsin Elementary Reading Teachers →

Matthew Ladner: While last week’s NAEP news was glum nationwide, Mississippi students performed relatively well. You have to dig into the details to see just how well. First, a bit of backstory. Mississippi is one of the nation’s poorest states and has the largest African-American student population in the country. The state has ranked at … Continue reading NAEP 2019: Mississippi improvement more impressive under closer examination →

Wall Street Journal: The highest-achieving students are doing better and the lowest are doing worse than a decade ago. That’s one depressing revelation from the latest Nation’s Report Card that details how America’s union-run public schools are flunking. The results from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is administered to students around the … Continue reading America’s Schools Flunk Despite more spending, test scores fall and the achievement gap grows. →

Alan Borsuk: The council on teacher quality is clearly correct that there’s been a national retreat from once-touted ways of improving teachers. Is that good or bad? The answer might lie in states such as Wisconsin and in finding out whether easing up on high-stakes judging of teachers brings more cooperation and success — or … Continue reading The push to improve teacher effectiveness has cooled off. That’s not necessarily bad. →

Matthew Ladner: Americans thus seem to see their public education system as falling short in a variety of ways and aren’t especially optimistic about future improvement. Republicans exhibited the greatest amount of optimism, with 24 percent forecasting that the American public school system would be a “model of excellence around the world” in 20 years. … Continue reading Should we feel optimistic or pessimistic about American K-12 education’s future? →

Associated Press: MADISON – Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will kill a contentious plan to punish students who disrupt free speech on University of Wisconsin System campuses, his spokeswoman said Friday as system regents took another step toward implementing the policy. The regents in 2017 adopted a Republican-backed policy declaring students who twice disrupt others’ free … Continue reading Civics, Politics and Campus Free Speech →

Molly Beck: Less than half of Wisconsin students again this year are considered to be proficient in reading and math — a trend Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Thursday called “disturbing.” The percentage of students in public and private voucher schools scoring well in reading and math on state tests dropped slightly during the 2018-19 … Continue reading Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos questions how K-12 funding was spent given test score decline →

Sarah Kramer: To that end, Tom does everything necessary to make sure the people that Harris Funeral Homes serves feel welcome. He sweeps the floors, plants flowers, shovels snow, and changes lightbulbs. Many times he will be the one to open the door and greet you with a smile as you walk into the funeral … Continue reading Civics: Can Unelected Officials Rewrite Federal Law? This Supreme Court Case Will Tell Us →

Jenny Peek: Mark Seidenberg, a UW-Madison professor and cognitive neuroscientist, has spent decades researching the way humans acquire language. He is blunt about Wisconsin’s schools’ ability to teach children to read: “If you want your kid to learn to read you can’t assume that the school’s going to take care of it. You have to … Continue reading Why are Madison’s Students Struggling to Read? →

Kevin Currie-Knight: Imagine a US state where locksmiths, pastoral counselors, home security companies, and acupuncturists do not have to be licensed by the government to do business. They could pursue certification with a private organization if they wanted to, but they could decide not to as well. Would chaos ensue? Recently, the state legislature in … Continue reading Why Should Anyone Need a License for Anything? →

Corey DeAngelis: Using Evers’ own publicly available Accountability Report Card data from the 2017-18 school year, I find that private schools participating in choice programs and independent charter schools tend to offer the citizens of Wisconsin more “bang for the buck” than district-run public schools. Specifically, private schools deliver 2.27 more Accountability Report Card points … Continue reading More for your money: School choice →

Christina Samuels Employing experienced and fully-credentialed teachers is one of the major factors contributing to California school districts that are producing higher-than-expected academic achievement among their Hispanic, black, and white students, says a new report from the Learning Policy Institute. In the report California’s Positive Outliers: Districts Beating the Odds, released Thursday, the Palo Alto-based … Continue reading Teacher Experience and Preparation Led to Stronger Black and Hispanic Achievement, Study Says →

National Education Association: Points were tallied and converted into letter grades using a total of 100 potential points and a traditional A – F scale. Only six state statutes garnered enough points to avoid an “F,” and all of those were “D” grades except for Maryland (“B-“) and Tennessee (“C-“). To better distinguish among the … Continue reading US National Teacher Union Reviews State Charter Statutes →

Vicki Alger and Martin Lueken: Secondly, Pope’s latest perennial request to the LFB asks for only the program’s costs and doesn’t ask for a single voucher program savings calculation. That omission, however, didn’t stop dozens of media outlets from repeating the ominous headline that vouchers, along with charter schools, “consume $193 million in state aid.” … Continue reading “that $119 million voucher cost represents just 1 percent of Wisconsin’s $11.5 billion in total local, state, and federal public-school funding” →

David Blaska: Just catching up with events in the Mad Madison school district, this time at Leopold elementary school. Thanks to Dylan Brogan of Isthmus, one of the finest reporters in town, we learn only this week of an incident four weeks ago, well before the Spring school board election. Children lie about what happened … Continue reading Who will teach the parents? →

Curiously, this document is NOT shared as part of the Madison School Board public documents. Chan Stroman obtained the April 4, 2019 70 page package via an open records request (!). The April 4, 2019 document contains a number of interesting links and shares, including a summary of Governor Ever’s (Former long time Wisconsin DPI … Continue reading Weekly Update Shared to Madison School Board Members →

Nick Wilson: I am not interested in politics or controversy, and I derive no pleasure in creating difficulties for the UW out of personal resentment. But whenever family and friends ask me about graduate school, I have to explain that rather than an academic program centered around pedagogy and public policy, STEP is a 12-month … Continue reading What They Don’t Teach You at the University of Washington’s Ed School →

Claire McInerny: Last year, only a third of the 557 students met grade level in all subjects, compared to 52 percent in the district overall. Nearly 65 percent of Overton students were English-language learners, and 93 percent came from low-income households. Only a handful of them were white. A year ago, she stood in the … Continue reading Why Austin’s Schools Aren’t Working For Students Of Color →

Joe Nathan: I agree with Scott Croonquist, executive director of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, which represents more than 40 suburban and urban districts. Croonquist told me on March 13 his organization agrees with many others: “The new system has only been in effect for half a year. We have no data to support … Continue reading Teacher Credentialism Commentary →

Jessie Opoien: WILL’s most likely battle with Evers, Esenberg said, is over administrative rules — a “fight that only a wonk could love.” As Evers seeks to implement policies with a Republican Legislature opposed to most of his goals, he could direct state agencies to implement administrative rules — most of which WILL would be … Continue reading “Strategic Lawfare”, administrative rule making, the administrative state – and reading →

E. Alex Jung: For all the conversation lately about portraits of masculinity in the Midwest (or lack thereof), one of the most quietly stirring comes from Bing Liu’s Oscar-nominated documentary, Minding the Gap. Centering around a love of skateboarding, the documentary initially follows three skaters living in Rockford, Illinois — Keire Johnson, Zack Mulligan, and … Continue reading Oscar-Nominated Minding the Gap Director Bing Liu on America’s Masculinity Crisis →

Colin Mulligan: The main problem with a pass/fail system is its inability to distinguish one student from another. How would a graduate school differentiate the thousands of applicants if they all had the same grades? Well, perhaps these institutions should adapt more progressive acceptance policies as well. One education initiative created by the Harvard School … Continue reading Time to rethink traditional grading system →