April 18, 2005
Preventing Early Reading Failure
I came across an interesting review by Joseph K. Torgesen in the American Educator that is relevant to recent discussions on Reading Recovery and Direct Instruction. You can find the article online, but I will limit myself to quoting just a few lines from the paper.
"Instruction for at-risk children must be more explicit than for other children. ... Explicit instruction is instruction that does not leave anything to chance and does not make assumptions about skills and knowledge that children will acquire on their own. ... Evidence for this is found in a recent study of preventive instruction given to a group of highly at-risk children during kindergarten, first grade, and second grade (Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Rose, et al., 1999). Of three interventions that were tested on children with phonological weaknesses, the most phonemically explicit one produced the strongest growth in word-reading ability. In fact, of the three interventions tested, only the most explicit intervention produced a reliable increase in the growth of word-reading ability over children who were not provided any special interventions.(emphasis added) Other studies (Brown and Felton, 1990; Hatcher, Hulme, and Ellis, 1994; Iversen and Tunmer, 1993) combine with this one to suggest that schools must be prepared to provide very explicit and systematic instruction in beginning word-reading skills to some of their students if they expect virtually all children to acquire word-reading skills at grade level by third grade.
10 Area Teachers Receive Kohl Awards
The award that Tina Murray received Sunday may not go far in helping fund a new environmental project she started last week at Shabazz City High School, but it was gratifying nonetheless.Murray, who has worked as a technology teacher at Shabazz for seven years, was one of 10 Dane County teachers to receive the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Fellowship award.
Madison Cares Thoreau PTO Presentation
 | Madison School Board President Bill Keyes & Arlene Silveira Madison CARES presentation at the Thoreau PTO on Tuesday, April 12, 2005. Video (75MB). More on Madison CARES here. |
Additional School on the Leopold School Site Facts
This information was provided to school board members via public information department
· Leopold Elementary School is overcrowded, and will become more and more overcrowded. The school’s capacity is 655 students; 668 students currently attend the school. In five years the school is projected to have a minimum of 750 students and as many as 830 students, that is 95 to 175 over capacity.
· In addition, because of overcrowding there, 111 students who live close to Leopold are assigned to elementary schools outside their neighborhood. One of these schools is Chavez Elementary which currently needs and will continue to need seats for students moving into new developments close to this school on the southwest side.
· This question asks for authorization for up to $14.5 million to build and equip a new elementary school adjacent to the existing school on the Leopold site, and to renovate, remodel, equip and add to the existing Leopold building, and to make related site improvements.
· Building on the existing site precludes having to purchase at least 15 acres of additional land for an elementary school.
· Included in the $14.5 million is up to $1.6 million for the existing Leopold building to convert and remodel the former library and current cafeteria into small and large classrooms.
· If this referendum is approved, the new school will open for the 2007-08 school year, and plans call for the two schools to be paired. Just as it’s done in other school district paired schools, one building would have kindergarten – 2nd grade students, and the other building would have 3rd – 5th grade students.
· Construction of this new elementary school will be consistent with the school district practice of having schools close to where students live, and of all students in a given neighborhood attending the same school.
· Without the new school on the Leopold site, and in the optimal boundary changes scenario presented to the Board of Education, at least an additional 64 current Leopold students will be assigned to schools outside their neighborhood. Under this scenario, over 300 students will be moved to different West side elementary schools – Thoreau, Van Hise, Stephens and Crestwood.
· Other boundary redistricting scenarios under consideration would move 828, 1063 or 1137 students to different elementary schools due to overcrowding. *(soon there will be an option to move around 300 students but the school board has yet to receive the information)
· The new school will cost the average homeowner an average of $25 per year for 15 years, and will generally maintain present school boundaries. (The median value of Madison homes is $205,400.)
For more information about the May 24 referendum, go to the district’s Web site at www.mmsd.org