West HS English 10: More from Pam Nash

As many of you know, I have been in touch with the District and West HS administration -- as well as with our BOE -- with a request for "before-and-after" data on the English elective choices of West's juniors and seniors. The reason for my request is that one of the primary reasons why English 10 was implemented was the concern that some groups of West students were not choosing to take challenging electives in their upper class years. Here are links to my earlier posts:

http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2007/08/west_hs_english_4.php
http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2007/08/west_hs_english_5.php

On August 29, I received the following email from Pam Nash:

Laurie-

Our Research and Evaluation staff reported today that the district does not keep course requests and course assignments beyond one year. Therefore, we cannot retrieve information that shows, historically, what English courses were chosen by whom over time.

We will be able to give you this year's information by the end of next week.

Pam

That same day, I wrote to Pam:

Are you saying you do not know what this year's seniors took last year, as
juniors? Or is their data still available (along with this year's juniors)?

Pam wrote back:

Laurie-
R&E says that they do not save an archive base of course requests. They do still have the Spring 2007 requests.

To which I replied today:

Hi, Pam. Thanks for the update on the data situation. It's somewhat good news. I think. Assuming that I understand what you're saying.

I think you're saying that we still have the senior English elective choices made by the current senior class, the last class to not have English 10, the last class to take English electives as sophomores.

I assume it also means that we still have the junior English elective choices made by the current 11th grade class.

By all means, don't let anyone destroy that data! It may be the only thing we have for a "before and after" comparison.

Or is it? My son pointed out to me that surely West must have complete transcripts for all current seniors. Right? (Maybe even the complete transcripts for several recently graduated classes, it occurs to me.) Doesn't that mean we have a listing of any and all courses that the current seniors have taken while at West? If so, that must mean we still have information about which junior year English electives the current seniors took. And that would obviously be the better comparison to the choices of the current junior class.

Something I really don't understand, Pam, is that if there was such concern about the English electives being taken by different groups of West students, where are the data that justify that concern?

I also do not understand why -- if English 10 was instituted largely to rectify that specific problem -- no effort was made to collect, save, organize and analyze the data that would tell us if the new core curriculum is having the desired effect?

In any event, I look forward to receiving any and all relevant data. At the very least, I hope there is a way to retrieve the current seniors' junior year elective choices, so that a comparison can be made with this year's juniors' elective choices.

Laurie

It would be nice if one of our school board members would request these data analyses.

Do culture-themed public schools cross a legal line?

Nathanial Popper:

When the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy opened four years ago in suburban Minneapolis, the school was a bold experiment and its survival was in question. There was the scramble to attract students that any charter school faces, but Tarek ibn Ziyad had the additional worry of a constitutional challenge, given the school's sponsorship by a nonprofit called Islamic Relief and the curriculum's emphasis on Muslim culture and the Arabic language.

The school has not only survived but thrived, and there are plans for local expansion. Perhaps the surest sign that the experiment worked came last week, when a new charter school opened up thousands of miles away in Hollywood, Fla.--founded by Jewish parents, Ben Gamla Charter School has kosher food in the cafeteria and Hebrew posters in the classrooms. In the planning of the Florida school, Tarek ibn Ziyad's experience was taken into account.

The success of Tarek ibn Ziyad's model, and its adoption outside of Minnesota, heralds a potentially explosive new trend in America's charter schools: publicly funded schools tied to a particular religion. The founders of Ben Gamla are already promising more branches in other states, and parents from other religions are sure to venture into similar territory, pushing the constitutional limits even further. As Peter Deutsch, the Orthodox Jewish congressman who started Ben Gamla, has said, it "could be a huge paradigm shift in education in America

Superintendent by Feb. eyed: School Board wants hire by then

Susan Troller:

The Madison School Board intends to hire its new superintendent of schools by early February 2008, so he or she can learn the ropes before veteran Superintendent Art Rainwater retires at the end of June.

Board President Arlene Silveira announced a working schedule for the superintendent search this week. The board has been meeting throughout the summer with a consulting firm and now has mapped out dates and action items for naming the new administrator.

"We're very comfortable with our consultants and with the process. Even so, I'm a little nervous about it," she said this morning. "This is likely to be the most important thing we do as a board, and we're taking it very seriously. Change is good, though, and it's an exciting process."

She said the process in Madison will include more public input than is typical in most communities looking for a new school superintendent.

"We'll have two general community forums on September 19 and 20, and there will probably be 20 focus groups with everyone from advocacy groups, to our philanthropic partners, to the business community and staff members. If we made it any broader, we'd just be inviting names out of the phone book," she laughed.

Washington State's Math Standards Review

Donna Gordon Blankinship:

The board's executive director, Edie Harding, said public comment required some changes to a draft report the committee circulated last month, but the basic message is the same: The state needs tougher math standards and clearer guidance for teachers, parents and students.

The draft report called for putting more emphasis on learning the mechanics of math, but Harding said the math committee learned during public hearings around the state that people thought the report came on too strong concerning memorizing basic math facts.

Washington does need to re-emphasize the mechanics of math, but not give up on teaching students how to apply what they learn and to understand how math ideas fit together, Harding said.

The report, written by Linda Plattner of the Maryland-based educational research firm Strategic Teaching, which was hired by the state to assess its math expectations, also emphasizes the need to simplify grade level expectations and to set priorities for the state's math standards.

"That should help teachers as well as kids," Harding said.

The focus groups also taught the math committee that they need to include a math educator in their review committee so they can hear from a teacher if the standards will work in the classroom.

Strategic Teaching Draft Report: 650K PDF:

The bottom line is that Washington’s math standards need to be strengthened. If mathematics is the gateway to student success in higher education and the workplace, Washington is getting too few of its students to and through the door.

Compared to other higher-achieving states and countries, Washington is not expecting enough of its students. There is insufficient emphasis on key mathematical content. Some key math should be taught earlier in a student’s schooling, and some key math is simply missing. Washington does not provide sufficient clarity in its math expectations and does not ensure that Washington students learn the critical algorithms — math rules — that they need to succeed.

And the standards do not provide sufficient clarity of how well students are expected to learn math. For example, the standards often call for student “understanding” rather than a demonstration that a student can actually use the math to calculate, estimate, or solve a problem.

This is a harsh assessment. To be sure, there are good qualities in Washington’s mathematics standards including well-defined and developed mathematical processes and some well-developed strands, such as Algebra in the elementary years.

The Madison School Board instructed Superintendent Art Rainwater to conduct an "Independent Math Review" as part of his annual review process. Proposed Math Review Task Force [outline] (which did not obtain the required NSF funding).

I found it interesting and useful that Strategic Teaching included a discussion "on higher achieving states and countries" acknowledging the fact that our next generation is not competing with students from only from Racine or Green Bay, but those from Helsinki, Bangalore, Moscow and many other communities around the world.

Make science easier, examiners are told

Adam Kula & Alexandra Frean:

Examiners will have to set easier questions in some GCSE science papers, under new rules seen by The Times. A document prepared by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), which represents awarding bodies across Britain, says that, from next year, exam papers should consist of 70 per cent “low-demand questions”, requiring simpler or multiple-choice answers. These currently make up just 55 per cent of the paper.

The move follows growing concern about the “dumbing down” of science teaching at GCSE and grade inflation of exam results, which critics claim is the result of a government drive to reverse the long-term decline in the number of pupils studying science.

In the past five years, the proportion of students gaining a grade D or better in one of the combined science papers has leapt from 39.6 to 46.7 per cent.

The latest move has been condemned by an education expert. Last night Professor Alan Smithers, head of the Education and Employment Research Centre at the University of Buckingham, said: “Deliberately increasing the proportion of easier questions is a clear example of lowering the bar.”

Teachers in Trouble, Parents Ignored, Part III

Jay Matthews:

Dawn Henderson's daughter Kaitlin was crying hysterically when she came home from Hardy Middle School one day in early October 2003. The D.C. sixth grader had a learning disability. She had not understood her social studies homework and was among six students who had not completed it.

Henderson said she knew the teacher to be a young woman new to the profession. During visits to Hardy, Henderson said she heard the teacher yell at some students about failing to do homework.

Kaitlin told her mother that day the teacher had tried something new: She made the six students stand in front of the class and hold all of their textbooks in their outstretched arms for about 15 minutes, until their muscles ached. Kaitlin did not have many books, but they were heavy for an 11-year-old.

Views on Wisconsin's K-12 School Spending

Frank Lassee:

The third Friday of September is an important date for schools. On that day the final enrollment count is made, then each school district will move to finalize their annual budget. Having the school budgets final by mid October is important for all of us, especially property taxpayers.

Under current law, schools will be allowed to spend $264 more for each student than last year. That is what the Governor and Democratic Senators proposed, as well. The Assembly has shaved it back to $200 per kid each year of the budget (with an incentive of $264 if the teachers agree to negotiate for a less expensive health plan). Last year in Wisconsin, we spent almost $10 billion on our public schools, approximately $5 Billion of state taxes, $4 Billion of local property taxes and $1 Billion from the federal government.

Paul Soglin:

Wisconsin State Representative Frank Lasee (R-2nd) needs to go back to school. I suppose it is an intended public service that he tells us that, "Education is by far the single biggest expense of our state budget."

O.K. Interesting information, but he never tells us what is the proper level of spending, or for that matter, why home owners should pay more so that businesses can pay less for education.

He makes additional observations such as the fact that, "Total spending divided by the number of teachers works out to nearly $150,000 for each teacher."

Huh? What does that mean? Lasee thinks that the cost of busing kids to school or the cost of school books is to be measured by the cost per teacher. A figure as useful as knowing the cost of postage to mail a letter to the moon. Most of his comments continue with measures and data that are meaningless, either with no context or a useless context.

Much more on K-12 spending here.

Emphasizing Middle School Academics

Daniel de Vise:

Montgomery County School Superintendent Jerry D. Weast marched down a hallway on the first day of classes in the newly modernized Parkland Magnet Middle School in the Rockville area, trailed by a retinue of students. Then he stopped and asked, "Who's taking algebra?" Three hands went up.

A few years ago, the question would have seemed more fitting in a high school. But today, half of Montgomery students take high school algebra before they leave the eighth grade, part of a regionwide trend toward more rigorous instruction in middle school.

Middle schools are the center of attention as Washington area school systems enter the 2007-08 academic year, which began yesterday in Montgomery, Howard, Anne Arundel and Charles counties and in the District. Four of eight middle schools in Charles, eight of 19 in Anne Arundel and 11 of 38 in Montgomery missed their achievement targets this year under the No Child Left Behind law.

2007 SAT Scores Released

The College Board:

The College Board announced SAT® scores today for the class of 2007, the largest and most diverse class of SAT takers on record. Nearly 1.5 million students (1,494,531) in the class of 2007 took the SAT, and minority students comprised nearly four out of 10 test-takers.

"The record number of students, coupled with the diversity of SAT takers in the class of 2007, means that an increasing number of students in this country are recognizing the importance of a college education and are taking the steps necessary to get there," said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board. "I am encouraged by the greater numbers of students from all walks of life who are taking on the challenge of the SAT and college.

This year's average score in critical reading is 502, a 1-point decline compared to last year, or a change of 0.20 percent. The average scores in mathematics and writing declined 3 points each compared to a year ago, bringing the scores to 515 and 494, or a change of 0.58 percent and 0.60 percent, respectively.

Wisconsin Results [250K PDF]. 50 State results are available here.

Daniel de Vise:

The Class of 2007 posted the lowest SAT averages in several years, according to scores released this morning. Scores from the second year of an expanded, three-section college-entrance test declined by double digits in Maryland and the District, by five points in Virginia and by seven points nationwide, compared with the previous graduating class.

Education leaders said the modest decline reflected an ever larger and more diverse population of students taking the test. More blacks, Asians and Hispanics took the SAT in this year's graduating class than in any previous class; two-fifths of test takers are now minorities.

Study finds emotional trauma can alter size of a child's brain

Jill Tucker:

Hoping to unlock some of the mysteries of post-traumatic stress disorder in children, a Stanford University researcher looked inside their heads.

What Dr. Victor Carrion found was startling: Children with PTSD and exposure to severe trauma had smaller brains.

Carrion found a nearly 9 percent reduction in the size of the hippocampus, a horseshoe-shaped sheet of neurons that deals with memory and emotions.

The study, released earlier this year, was just a first step toward understanding the physical effects of trauma and why some children have a greater ability to ward off physical and mental reactions.

Families Weigh Drugs for Attention Deficit

Benjamin Brewer, MD:

With school about to start, kids are coming in for their physicals -- and for medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

I'm seeing more kids each year with symptoms of ADHD. Some just have the attention problems and others are hyperactive, too.

New treatments can be given once a day. They are relatively easy for kids to take at home and don't require the involvement of the school nurse during the day, as shorter-acting older medicines do.

The medicines are even easier for doctors to prescribe. A trial of medication is the quickest and easiest thing to try for kids with symptoms, given the limited impact a doctor can have on complex family dynamics.

It may be too easy an option considering the rising sales of these heavily marketed medications. Ads for attention-deficit medications are everywhere in the popular press where a parent might see them, including People, Good Housekeeping and Family Circle magazines at our house.

America Risks the Fate of the Roman Republic

David Walker (Comptroller General of the United States):

T he US is a great nation, possibly the greatest of all time. Yet to keep America great, policymakers must learn certain lessons from history, notably the downfall of the Roman republic.

The world has changed dramatically in recent years. The US is currently the sole superpower on earth but that exclusive status is likely to be short-lived. While the US is number one in many things, from the size of its economy to military might, it faces several big sustainability challenges.

America's fiscal, healthcare, education, energy, environment, immigration and Iraq policies are in need of review and revision. Timely action is needed because Washington's historical crisis-management approach to dealing with hard public policy choices is no longer prudent.

Jeremy Grant has more along with David Potter and Martin Walker.

Comptroller of the Currency

Is Wisconsin's ACT Rank Inflated?

Bruce Murphy:

Last week, we got the annual good news that Wisconsin “scores near top on ACT once again,” as a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel headline declared. Aping her predecessors, state Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster hailed the results as proof of how dandy we’re doing in Badgerland. The “composite score speaks well of our students’ academic achievement and the support they receive from their parents and teachers,” she declared.

But are we really doing that well? A close look at the ACT test data offers some reason for caution. Yes, Wisconsin’s average score of 22.3 was high compared to the national average of 21.2 (with scores ranging from 18.9 for Mississippi to 23.5 for Massachusetts), but the percentage of students taking the test here is lower than in 15 states. While 70 percent of Wisconsin students take the test, the percentage is 100 in Illinois and Colorado, 96 in Tennessee and Mississippi, and ranges from 71 to 82 percent for another 11 states.

Why does this matter? As the percentage of students taking the test increases, you are likely to include more low-attendance and low-performance students in the mix, pushing the average score lower.

Burmaster brags that Wisconsin has maintained its high ACT score even as the percentage of students taking the test rose. But the increase was minimal, rising from 68 percent in 2002 to 70 percent last year. That includes a steady rise in the number of African-American and Hispanic students taking the test, but they still remain underrepresented.

“We allow people in this state to pound their chest while ignoring the fact that Milwaukee has significantly fewer kids taking (the ACT),” Milwaukee School Board member Terry Falk declared in the JS story. (Falk, a former contributor to Milwaukee Magazine, sure knows how to give good quotes.)

As a reality check, I looked at state scores combined with the percentage of students taking the test to estimate which states we might actually trail. A state like Mississippi, for instance, can be quickly rejected: Yes, 96 percent of students took the test, but the average score of 18.9 was abysmally low, worst among all 50 states. Even if Wisconsin tested 96 percent of students, its average score would never drop that low.

Teens exposed to world of biotech careers through partnership

Bernadette Tansey:

The family culture of Berkeley's Hernandez clan is a cool blend of Mexican roots and Bay area savvy - jumpy banda music, quinceanera parties, spicy pico de gallo and genetic engineering experiments.

That last part, the biotechnology, has been grafted onto the traditions Roberto and Irma Hernandez brought with them when the family immigrated to California in the late 1980s. Their arrival was timely - a new school program was about to welcome minority and disadvantaged kids to the biotech industry.

Their oldest child, Roberto, was the pioneer at 15 when he took a chance on the unfamiliar subject at Berkeley High School in 1992. Over the years, he has persuaded his brother and two of his three sisters to sign up for the biotechnology classes.

These four children of immigrants are now part of a young generation of biotech initiates whose prospects include some of the best-paying jobs in the Bay Area.

Roberto Hernandez, 30, was one of the first students to join the school program designed to convince disadvantaged kids that biotechnology jobs are a real option for them. The program, Biotech Partners, removes the barriers that often stand between low-income students and the well-compensated positions abounding in their own neighborhoods.

Hernandez and his sister Griselda, 28, work at the sprawling Bayer Healthcare campus in West Berkeley. Their younger brother Jesus just spent the eve of his 17th birthday tossing around terms such as "cell transformation" and "diafiltration" at a celebration for Biotech Partners students like himself who were finishing summer internships.

Biotech Partners Website:

Biotech Partners provides an entry-level biotechnology education and training program dedicated to supporting the San Francisco Bay Area’s robust bioscience industry while providing valuable working skills for local young people.

Biotech Partners has long been recognized as a model for connecting youth who are under-represented in the sciences to the world of biotechnology. A non-profit organization, Biotech Partners owes its success to strong collaboration among local biotechnology companies, secondary school and community college districts, a dedicated core staff and most importantly, the students and their families.

Related: Madison West High School's Accelerated Biology Program [RSS].

Beloit College's Mindset List® for the Class of 2011

Beloit College:

Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead.

# What Berlin wall?

# Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.

Cathy Lynn Grossman has more:

For this fall's incoming college class, "off the hook" could mean "excellent" or escaping blame, but for sure it has nothing to do with telephones.

"Here's Johnny!" That's Jack Nicholson in The Shining, not the intro for Johnny Carson's monologue, according to today's 18-year-olds.

Professors had best update their lingo if they want to communicate with the Class of 2011 (on the assumption that anyone actually finishes in four years anymore).

Here to help is the 10th annual Beloit College Mindset List, released today by the small Wisconsin liberal arts college.

Checking the Kids Homework Over the Internet
Growing Web-Based Software

Christopher Lawton:

After his divorce, Gregg La Montagne found it hard to help his 15-year-old daughter with her schoolwork since she lives in another state. So for her Spanish class recently, Mr. La Montagne told her to write her assignment in an online word-processing application made by Google Inc.

Mr. La Montagne, a sales manager in Austin, Texas, then accessed his daughter's homework online, using the same software through his Web browser at home. A native Spanish speaker, Mr. La Montagne was then able to suggest grammar changes, which he typed in at the bottom of the paper. His daughter, who was online at the same time, was able to see her father's notes almost instantaneously as her screen refreshed, and then in turn correct the document for him to see.

"It makes it easier to participate," says Mr. La Montagne, 50 years old. "It's not the same as being with her, but it's at least a step in that direction."

Mr. La Montagne is one of a growing number of parents now using Web-based applications to review and aid their children's educational work. Google Docs & Spreadsheets, which Mr. La Montagne used, provides word processing and spreadsheets that a consumer can access using just a Web browser.

New LA Superintendent "Blasts Culture of Low Expectations"

Howard Blume & Joel Rubin:

The L.A. schools chief tells administrators 'we're going to teach you how to change.' They'll get leadership training and will be held accountable for student achievement, he says.

In his first formal speech to administrators, Los Angeles Schools Supt. David L. Brewer told principals and managers Friday that they must change both themselves and a pervasive culture of "low expectations for brown and black children," adding that they would receive mandatory leadership training and support but also would be held accountable for student achievement.

Brewer, a devotee of management books, set out eight principles -- including creating "a sense of urgency," "building a team" and "communicating a vision" -- that he expects principals and others to follow.

In a later interview, Brewer said the Los Angeles Unified School District would launch a pilot management-training program, with courses shaped by input from universities, outside consultant firms and corporations.

"We're going to teach you how to change," Brewer told his audience, promising "world-class leadership and management training" as well as real support from higher-ups. "You're going to need it," he said.

Many of the roughly 1,500 administrators in attendance took notes on stationery provided free by a credit union that was trying to drum up business. After Brewer's morning speech at a hall in the Los Angeles Convention Center, "inspirational" was the adjective of choice for many.

French Gains Foothold in NYC's Dual Language Schools

Julie Bosman:

Nearly all the 65 dual-language programs in the New York City public schools are conducted in Spanish and Chinese, languages that are considered practical tools for future success.

So far, French has not fit into that equation.

But next month, the first French-English dual-language programs will begin at three schools in the city: Public School 125 on the Upper West Side, P.S. 58 in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and Intermediate School 22 in Harlem. They are the result of two years of lobbying from the French Embassy and a group of parents determined to promote the language in the public schools.

Dual-language programs have operated for more than 15 years, officials at the city’s Department of Education said. The inclusion of French brings the total number of languages in the program to five, including Spanish, Chinese, and last year’s addition of Haitian-Creole and Russian.

West HS English 10: Request for Data -- Reply from Pam Nash

I received the following reply to my request for English 10 data from Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools Pam Nash:

Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:27:48 -0500
From: pnash@madison.k12.wi.us>
To: lauriefrost@ameritech.net, eholmes@madison.k12.wi.us, hlott@madison.k12.wi.us, arainwater@madison.k12.wi.us, mbking1@wisc.edu

Laurie-

Mr. Holmes and his staff will do this. Pam

Pamela J. Nash
Assistant Superintendent
for Secondary Schools
Madison Metropolitan School District
(608) 663-1635
(608) 442-2149 (fax)

And here's what I wrote back:

Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:21:06 -0500
To: pnash@madison.k12.wi.us, eholmes@madison.k12.wi.us, hlott@madison.k12.wi.us, arainwater@madison.k12.wi.us, mbking1@wisc.edu
From: "Laurie A. Frost"
Subject: Re: English 10 early results request
Cc: asilveira@madison.k12.wi.us, lkobza@boardmanlawfirm.com, lucym@charter.net, jwinstonjr@madison.k12.wi.us, mcole@madison.k12.wi.us, bmoss@madison.k12.wi.us, ccarstensen@madison.k12.wi.us

Thank you, Pam. I will look forward to receiving the data.

I know you all probably see me as a thorn in your side. Please try to understand, I am simply trying to keep you honest with the public ... and empirically based.

If the results are positive -- if English 10 is associated with a significant change in the target variable of concern (rigor of elective choices in 11th and 12th grade) -- wouldn't you want to know?

And if the results are not positive, wouldn't you want to know?

Laurie

Back to School Picnic

100 Black Men of Madison:

100 Black Men of Madison 11th Annual Back to School Picnic will be held this Saturday August 25th, rain or shine at Demetral Park located on Commercial and Packers Avenue at 11 am.

Over 2,000 free backpacks filled with school supplies will be distributed to students in kindergarten thru eighth grade.

In addition, hamburgers, hot dogs and beverages will be served. This event is first come, first served and students must be in attendance to receive a backpack.

The purpose of this event is to assist students at the beginning the school year with the supplies needed for academic success and to reduce the achievement gap.

For more information please contact, Chris Canty at 244-1259 or cwcanty@gmail.com.

Via a Johnny Winston, Jr. email.

West HS English 10: Request for Data

Here is an email I sent to the BOE, asking them to request important outcome data for West HS's English 10 initiative. Embedded in the email is my own request for such data. As both a content and a process issue, I should think this would be of interest to all SIS readers. By all means, feel free to write to these people with your own request. --LAF

August 22, 2007

Dear BOE (especially Performance and Achievement Committee members Kobza, Winston and Cole):

Please see my email below to various people involved with the West HS English 10 initiative. Thank you for taking the appropriate and expected responsibility to obtain these data and make them public. We need to know if the things we are doing to our high school students are actually having the desired impact, in part, to guard against our doing things for our own misguided adult reasons (things like politics and stubborn pride).

I should think that the gap-closing effectiveness (or lack thereof) of a core course in 10th grade English at one of our four high schools would be of significant interest to community members throughout the District, including parents, teachers and students at the other three high schools ... and especially members of our School Board.

Many thanks,
Laurie

Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 08:42:39 -0500
To: hlott@madison.k12.wi.us,mbking1@wisc.edu,eholmes@madison.k12.wi.us,pnash@madison.k12.wi.us,arainwater.k12.wi.us
From: "Laurie A. Frost"
Subject: English 10 early results request

Dear All:

One of the primary reasons for the implementation of English 10 at West High School was concern about the failure of some groups of West students to take rigorous English electives in their upper class years.

Can you please send me the data regarding the English electives chosen by this year's 11th graders when they registered for classes six months ago? (Needless to say, I would also like to see the English elective data for the past few years, so that a meaningful comparison can be made between the choices of English 10-era versus pre-English 10-era students.)

This is the first group of West students to take English 10, so a look at the early results of the curricular initiative seems appropriate, as does sharing that information with the West community. I assume that the data are appropriately disaggregated by race and SES, given your concerns and your hypotheses about the impact of the new core course.

Many thanks.

Laurie Frost
West HS parent

Attempts to make schools healthier are faltering

The Economist:

THE proportion of children in America who are overweight has tripled over the past 20 years and now exceeds 17%, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The health problems that this causes include hypertension and type-2 diabetes, formerly known only among the nation's overweight adult population. A group sponsored by the National Institute on Ageing has warned that this may be the first generation ever to have a shorter lifespan than their parents.

All the while, the proportion of children who take part in daily exercise at high school has dropped from 42% in 1991 to only 28% in 2004, according to the CDC. Snacking has greatly increased; the Government Accountability Office found in 2003 that 99% of America's high schools now sell snacks and other food as well as providing lunches.

In an attempt to get the problem tackled at local level, Congress in 2004 passed an act directing school districts that get money from the national school-lunch programme to create “wellness” policies by the start of the 2006-07 school year. The districts were told to set standards for nutrition, physical activity and education about good food, then make sure that schools actually implement them.

One year after the deadline, the results are haphazard. School districts' plans range from a few paragraphs long to more than 25 pages. Some states, like Texas and Arkansas, have pre-emptively set standards for school districts under their jurisdiction, forcing schools to ban fizzy drinks and junk food while increasing the amount of exercise the pupils take. Others offer guidelines rather than mandates, with no repercussions for schools that don't comply. And in some areas, schools are being eased into change very slowly. Oregon's legislature passed a bill in June that gives its schools ten years to meet its new physical-education requirements.

Kewaunee High School goes solar

From WFRV:

KEWAUNEE (WFRV) - Tuesday morning, solar-electric panels were installed on the roof of Kewaunee High School.

The panels are part of a system that will produce about 2,800 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year - that's enough electricity to power three classrooms, which amounts to approximately $200 in energy savings per year to the school.

In addition to the solar panels, the school was awarded a three-week renewable energy curriculum to be integrated into the science curriculum. Students and teachers can access data from the solar-electric system via the Internet and use the information in classroom projects throughout the year.

The system was donated to the school by WPS Community Foundation as part of the SolarWise® for Schools program. Every year three or four new high schools are selected. Since 1996, 41 high schools in the Wisconsin Public Service area have participated in the program.

This program is funded by donations from 3,800 Wisconsin Public Service customers, as well as state grants.

For more information on solar energy, go to Focus on Energy.

NY State Names 17 More ‘Persistently Dangerous’ Schools

Jennifer Medina:

New York State education officials yesterday added 17 schools to the list of those considered “persistently dangerous,” substantially expanding the list for the second year in a row. All but 2 of the 27 schools on the new list are in New York City, including a dozen schools designed for students with severe disabilities.

The schools ranged from the behemoth Jamaica High School in Queens to smaller schools like Powell Middle School in Harlem and Public School 14 in Staten Island. The list also includes a school in Rochester and Berkshire Junior-Senior High School in Canaan, N.Y.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires states to compile annual lists of “persistently dangerous” schools but leaves it to each state to define the term. Many states, including New York, have been criticized for issuing extremely short lists in past years.

“We are utterly determined to make all schools safe,” said Richard P. Mills, the state education commissioner, in announcing the list yesterday at a news conference in Albany.

Mr. Mills said New York’s list had grown because the state had vastly improved its reporting efforts. He noted that the 49 other states had listed a total of only 30 schools as “persistently dangerous” last year, just a hairsbreadth more than the schools now listed by New York.

Madison Parent's School Safety Site posted 2006/2007 student teacher assaults/injury data here.

Wisconsin DPI "Discipline Data Collection and Reporting" webpage.

Teachers in Trouble - Parents Ignored, Part II

Jay Matthews:

For a long time, Dawn Mosisa had trouble forgiving herself for the way she shrugged off her daughter's story about the teacher who hit one of her second grade classmates in the spring of 2003. Her daughter said the man ordered the class to count to 10 in French while he hit the boy 10 times with a ruler.

The girl was not in the habit of making up such stories, the mother said, but like most parents, Mosisa did not want to think that any educator would be so cruel, so she chose not to believe it. When the teacher left the school the next year, Mosisa grew more concerned. But she said she could not get anyone at Maryvale Elementary School in Rockville to explain to her or her child exactly what had occurred and how they should respond.

Abuse of a student at school is a parent's nightmare. Not only do such incidents harm the victims and their parents, but they also trouble the children who may have witnessed the event and their parents. Such cases usually remain undisclosed because parents do not want their children embarrassed or disturbed by public knowledge of what happened. But Mosisa, 44, a student financial services official for a public university, has given an unusually detailed account that sheds light on a rarely examined side of public education.

Flushing Out Life's Hard Calls

Roger Blitz:

Harvard law school thinks it has found the solution to many of society's problems, from teenage delinquency to world diplomatic crises: a hand of poker.

The card game that is a game of skill to its advocates, and a potentially ruinous bet on chance to its detractors, is to be taught to disadvantaged US schoolchildren and college students to teach respect, business acumen and even war strategy.

Madison and State ACT Scores Rise

Susan Troller:

Madison public school students' average scores on the ACT college admissions exam outpace those of their counterparts statewide, even as Wisconsin performs well compared to other states.

The average composite score of Madison public high school students on the national test was 24.6 over the 2006-07 school year, the best showing the district has had since it began keeping ACT records 22 years ago. Nearly 70 percent of high school students in Madison took the test last year.

Up from 24.2 in 2005-06, the average score for Madison students compares to 22.3 among students statewide. The average national composite score is 21.2.

Although an achievement gap remains among minority students and their white counterparts in Madison, students from all ethnic groups here perform substantially better than their peers statewide, and nationally. For the second year in a row, all Madison minority sub-groups improved their performance on the ACT.

School Employees Serving on School Boards

Chris Moran:

School employees commonly serve on the governing boards of school districts that don't employ them. What makes a case in South County different is three administrators' dual roles at Southwestern College and the Sweetwater Union High School District, because they're in positions to vote on each other's budgets and salaries.

Greg Sandoval is interim president of Southwestern and a member of the Sweetwater board. Arlie Ricasa is director of student activities at Southwestern and is on the Sweetwater board. Jorge Dominguez is director of the Educational Technology Department at Sweetwater and a member of the Southwestern board.

The arrangement is legal. Governance ethicists raise questions about appearances, though, especially when the crossover votes occur as close together as they have recently.
How close?

In May, Sandoval joined the majority in a 3-2 vote rejecting $500,000 for Dominguez's department.

Open records request re: private school busing

I want to know who knew what when about missing the August 4 deadline to notify parents of the MMSD decision on busing private school students, so I sent the following to Steve Hartley:

I am sending this message to you because I was told that you are now the legal custodian of district records.

This is an open records request under sec. 19.35 of the Wisconsin Statutes for all records, prepared between August 22, 2006 and August 22, 2007, that relate to or mention in any way the busing of private school students by the Madison Metropolitan School District.

As I hope that you know, Wisconsin statues define records rather broadly. It is my understanding that the definition would include any e-mail between staff on their personal computers or MMSD computers and all e-mail that might have a format such as b710146.admin.admin1@madison.k12.wi.us and b717934.mailpo1.maildomi@madison.k12.wi.us.

I look forward to your prompt response to this request.

Ed Blume

K-12 Spending More Reliant on Federal Government Since No Child Left Behind Act

Gerald Prante:

New data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that the federal government has been commandeering a continually larger role in K-12 education in recent years, especially since 1999 and the January 2002 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act.

The new statistics include detailed financial data about school districts across the nation for the 2004-05 school year. Five years earlier, during the 1999-2000 school year, public school districts received an average of $578 per pupil from the federal government. By 2004-05, that number had risen to $919. That's a 60-percent increase, and even after adjusting for inflation, it's a 39 percent boost in federal aid. In this study we rank the states on how much more reliant they have become on Uncle Sam for this traditionally local government function.

There are several ways to quantify this increasing reliance on the federal government. The two we present in Table 1 are the absolute dollar amounts per pupil that the federal government sent to each state's school system, and the percentage of each state's education spending that comes from the federal government. The rightmost column shows how every state's share of revenue from the federal government has changed since 1999-00.

Related: K-12 Spending Climate.

When Special Education Goes Too Easy on Students

John Hechinger and Daniel Golden:

On June 25, 2006, Michael Bredemeyer threw his tasseled cap in the air and cheered after getting his high school diploma. Two days later, his parents mailed the diploma back.

Michael, now 19 years old, has learning disabilities and finished high school at a seventh-grade reading level, despite scoring above average on IQ tests. The Bredemeyers say he passed some classes because teachers inflated his grades and accepted poor work. By awarding him a meaningless diploma, they say, school officials avoided paying for ongoing instruction.

"I felt proud because he had worked so hard," says Michael's mother, Beverly, her voice breaking. "You don't want to take that away from him. But you knew it wasn't real. What's he going to do in the future? Will he be able to go to college and get a job?"

The Bredemeyers represent a new voice in special education: parents disappointed not because their children are failing, but because they're passing without learning. These families complain that schools give their children an easy academic ride through regular-education classes, undermining a new era of higher expectations for the 14% of U.S. students who are in special education.

Years ago, schools assumed that students with disabilities would lag behind their non-disabled peers. They often were taught in separate buildings and left out of standardized testing. But a combination of two federal laws, adopted a quarter-century apart, have made it national policy to hold almost all children with disabilities to the same academic standards as other students.

Moving Students Out of Poor Inner Cities Yields Little, Studies of HUD Vouchers Say

Jay Matthews:

Many social reformers have long said that low academic achievement among inner-city children cannot be improved significantly without moving their families to better neighborhoods, but new reports released today that draw on a unique set of data throw cold water on that theory.

Researchers examining what happened to 4,248 families that were randomly given or denied federal housing vouchers to move out of their high-poverty neighborhoods found no significant difference about seven years later between the achievement of children who moved to more middle-class neighborhoods and those who didn't.

Although some children had more stable lives and better academic results after the moves, the researchers said, on average there was no improvement. Boys and brighter students appeared to have more behavioral problems in their new schools, the studies found.

Where does MMSD get its numbers from?

One of the reasons that I have devoted more time than I should to analyzing the outcomes from the District's SLC grants (way too much time, given that I don't get paid for this and given that the District is going to continue on its merry way with restructuring our high schools into Small Learning Communities no matter what the data indicates) has to do with the frustration I experience when I try and find consistency in the District's data. Frankly, there isn't any. MMSD is consistently inconsistent with their numbers, see for example my earlier post trying to identify what the District spent in 2004/05. The District's latest press release trumpeting the success of our high school students on the ACT is just the latest example of this problem. According to MMSD, the percentage of Madison students who took the ACT is significantly higher than the percentages that are reported by DPI. The District reports that "Sixty-nine percent of all MMSD 12th grade students participated in the ACT during 2006-07, compared to 70% last year. Over the last 13 years, MMSD participation has ranged from 67-74% (see pg. 2 table)."

ACT Score Comparison by Year
Average Composite:

                                    %MMSD 12th
 Year     Madison   WI     US     Graders Tested 
2006-07    24.6     22.3    21.2        69%
2005-06    24.2     22.2    21.1        70%
2004-05    24.3     22.2    20.9        74%
2003-04    24.2     22.2    20.9        70%
2002-03    23.9     22.2    20.8        68%
2001-02    24.4     22.2    20.8        67%
2000-01    24.1     22.2    21.0        70%
1999-00    24.2     22.2    21.0        72%
1998-99    24.4     22.3    21.0        67%
1997-98    24.5     22.3    21.0        67%
1996-97    24.5     22.3    21.0        70%
1995-96    23.8     22.1    20.9        71%
1994-95    23.5     22.0    20.8        70%

According to DPI, a much smaller percentage of the District's 12th graders have taken the ACT in their junior or senior years. (The table below is taken from DPI)

ACT Results - Composite - All Students Madison Metropolitan
	Enrollment Grade 12	Number Tested	% Tested	Average Score - Composite
1996-97	1,552	982	63.3	24.5
1997-98	1,650	1,016	61.6	24.5
1998-99	1,639	1,014	61.9	24.4
1999-00	1,697	1,127	66.4	24.2
2000-01	1,728	1,091	63.1	24.1
2001-02	1,785	1,113	62.4	24.4
2002-03	1,873	1,126	60.1	23.9
2003-04	1,920	1,198	62.4	24.2
2004-05	2,055	1,247	60.7	24.3
2005-06	2,035	1,244	61.1	24.2
2006-07	1,983	1,151	58.0	24.6

An examination of minority student participation in the ACT reveals that the percentage of African American and Hispanic students taking the test has declined over the last three years. Only 20.1% of African American students in the District took the ACT as compared to 34.6% of African American students across the state. I am more than willing to believe that DPI's numbers are inaccurate, but don't they get this data from the District? Several months ago I was attempting to clarify discrepancies between MMSD and DPI in the cost per student data, and that experience is perhaps informative here. I wrote to clarify this issue:

I am writing to ask about the data that the district lists on its web site regarding cost per pupil. The excel spreadsheet t1.xls on the page (http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/re/dataprofile.htm) lists numbers that do not match those listed on DPI's web site (http://data.dpi.state.wi.us/data/selschool.asp). Specifically, the numbers that MMSD lists as the state average cost per student are greater than the numbers that DPI lists on its site, while at the same time the MMSD cost per student listed is less than what DPI states that our District spends per student. I am attaching the spreadsheet I downloaded from the District web site, along with the numbers that I got from DPI. If you could help me understand the discrepancy in these numbers it would be most appreciated.

The response that I got back from Roger Price was:

Jeff, Both data sources are from the DPI. They calculate both tables. I am not sure what the differences are between the two. We utilize the "Basic Facts" data as published by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance. Roger

Why the District with its extensive Data Warehouse has to rely on the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance to tell it what they spend per student is beyond me, but it doesn't fill me with any confidence about the accuracy of their data.

Don't fund Small Learning Community grant sought by MMSD

August 20, 2007

Gregory Dennis
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW., room 3W243 FB6
Washington, DC 20202-6200

Dear Mr. Dennis,

As a long-time advocate for academic excellence in the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD, Madison, Wisconsin), I urge the Department of Education to reject the MMSD’s recent application for a Small Learning Centers grant, Smaller Learning Communities Program CFDA #84.215L.

Please visit a popular Madison blog, schoolinfosystem.org, where you will find long threads with comments, questions, and concerns about the grant application, as well as the MMSD’s pilot efforts in small learning centers.

Blog commentators, some of whom as statistics instructors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, clinical psychologists, and other professionals with advanced degrees, express little support for the MMSD’s implementation of small learning communities.

When people try to get evaluation data from the MMSD on the current small learning communities, the district cannot or will not produce the information. The little available information about the MMSD’s small learning communities does not point to success, but rather to no impact on academic achievement. (See the evaluation on the MMSD Web site by Bruce King, whose services the MMSD wrote into its grant proposal.)

As the MMSD implements small learning schools, it simply amounts to closing the achievement gap by limiting opportunities for academic success of advanced students without raising the academic performance of low-performing ones.

Finally, the MMSD would be better off not to launch a major program change, especially when the current superintendent, the champion for the changes, will leave the district in the summer of 2008.

Sincerely,
Ed Blume

Hours of teaching differ for schools

Amy Hetzner & Alan Borsuk:

Where a student attends public school in the five-county metropolitan Milwaukee area can make a difference of as much as four weeks' time in the classroom per year, according to data reported to the state.

For the last two school years, the school districts of Burlington, Cudahy, Kettle Moraine, Mukwonago, Slinger, South Milwaukee and Wauwatosa reported that most - if not all - of their schools held classes at least 65 hours longer than the minimum hours set by state law.

Meanwhile, the Oak Creek-Franklin and Waukesha school districts met for the minimum amount of hours, and a large number of schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools system fell below the standard in 2006-'07.

"There's nothing more important than time with the classroom teacher," said Tony Evers, deputy superintendent of the state Department of Public Instruction. "And, if that's continually taken away, the state of Wisconsin would have an obligation that doesn't happen."

By and large, most public schools in Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Washington and Waukesha counties reported similar annual total instructional hours for their students for the past two years, the only years for which data was available from the DPI.

Teachers in Trouble, Parents Ignored -- Part I

Jay Matthews:

I have written several columns about clashes between educators and parents, a subject that rarely gets much attention because it is so personal. Those involved are often reluctant to give details. Over the last few years I have been saving material on some particularly interesting cases in which parents feel school officials froze them out of the process of dealing with their children's teachers. A few months ago, less-detailed versions of these episodes were reported in The Post. Today, and in the next two columns, I will describe four cases at more length, and follow with a column of reader reactions, and one on how experts in parental issues think these cases should have been handled.

What do you think explains these communication meltdowns? What can be done about them? Two of the cases I will examine are about teachers who allegedly abused students and were eventually fired, with parents unable to get the full story. I will start however with a different situation: a teacher who was fired for reasons that made no sense to the many parents who loved her work. They tried to influence the decision, but found their views rebuffed.

New Study Reveals School Finance Lawsuits Increase Funding Temporarily, Hike Taxes Permanently

Christ Atkins:

But few studies have attempted a comprehensive, state-by-state measure of the long-term fiscal impact of court education mandates4 and none have presented a state-by-state estimate of the cost of legislation approved to comply with court education mandates.

How much more are states spending on education as a result of these mandates? Have lawmakers increased taxes to comply with the mandates, and if so, how much? Has compliance with court mandates led to long-term increases in per-pupil spending? This study—the first in a new series called Appropriation by Litigation—will answer these questions.

Elmbrook considers allowing bonus for college-level work

Lisa Sink:

The Elmbrook School Board is considering plowing new ground by extending weighted-grade options to courses taken by students preparing for technical colleges rather than only four-year universities.

Elmbrook would be "blazing new territory" because no other area school district that Elmbrook considers high-achieving has this weighted-grade policy, said Elyce Moschella, Brookfield Central High School's coordinator of gifted and talented students.

The move would touch sensitive issues such as grade point averages and class rank. The policy change would extend weighted grades to Elmbrook classes that provide dual credit at both technical colleges and universities.

Those classes are college accounting, principles of interior design, mechanical drafting and computer-aided design, engineering computer-aided design seminar and auto systems and tuneup. Students taking those courses would earn an extra 0.025 on their grade point per semester, the same added quarter-point that students earn for taking advanced placement and fifth-year foreign language classes.

Education in Mexico: La Maestra

The Economist:

A YEAR ago Felipe Calderón won a desperately close election for Mexico's presidency by a margin of barely 200,000 votes. While there were many factors behind his victory, one that may have tipped the balance was the support of Elba Esther Gordillo, the head of the National Educational Workers' Union, as the country's teachers' union is called. Ms Gordillo is reckoned by many to be the most powerful woman in Mexico. Indeed, after Mr Calderón, she may be the second most powerful politician in the country.

Ms Gordillo's political power comes mainly from the union's sheer size: with 1.4m members teaching in primary and secondary schools, it is the largest labour union in Latin America. From that political base, Ms Gordillo controls a significant block of deputies in the lower house of the federal Congress, as well as two senators. And while no state governor will say so openly, “none of them will go against her will,” says Carlos Ornelas, an education specialist at Mexico City's Metropolitan Autonomous University.

"La maestra” (“the teacher”), as Ms Gordillo is known, is widely reckoned to have reached an unwritten—and maybe even implicit—agreement with Mr Calderón, under which she has swapped her support in other matters for his acquiescence in her grip over the country's schools.

Dane County High School Rankings and ACT results

While the rankings of high schools in Madison Magazine (MM) have been out for awhile, they’ve continued to stick in my craw. That may have something to do with my involvement with the school that’s ranked 21st of 21. Top-ranked Edgewood, I’m sure, has a different take on the rankings, which it highlights on its website.

The magazine says it used average ACT scores as one of the two signifiers of academic achievement, which comprise 60% of its ranking formula. This week DPI released 2007 ACT scores for all the state’s public high schools. How do this year’s performances on the ACT by Dane County high schools compare with the MM rankings?

Here’s a listing of the 19 Dane County public schools, ranked in order by 2007 average composite score on the ACT. The number in parenthesis after the school’s name is its MM ranking. Edgewood and Abundant Life, numbers 1 and 4 in the MM rankings, are not included because, as private schools, their scores are not available on DPI’s website.

2007 Average Composite ACT Score
1. West (5) 25.7
2. Memorial (10) 25.2
3. Middleton (3) 24.5
4. McFarland (9) 24.3
5. East (21) 23.8
6. Shabazz (17) 23.6
7. Verona (8) 23.5
8. Waunakee (2) 23.3
8. Mt. Horeb (13) 23.3
10. WI Heights (11) 23.2
10. Sun Prairie (12) 23.2
12. Monona Grove (15) 23.1
13. Oregon (7) 22.8
14. DeForest (14) 22.6
15. LaFollette (20) 22.4
15. Belleville (16) 22.4
17. Stoughton (19) 22.1
18. Deerfield (6) 21.8
19. Marshall (18) 20.8

Relative performance of high schools can be skewed by demographics. High School A could have higher average ACT scores for every racial/ethnic group than high school B, but High School B could have a higher overall average as a result of a different demographic mix. There are significant demographic differences between Madison’s high schools and suburban schools. What happens when we try to control for demographic differences when comparing ACT scores?

Given the way DPI reports the data and the demographics of Dane County schools, the only way to do this is to compare the test scores of white students. So I have done so. To state what I hope is obvious, comparing the test scores of just white students is not meant to imply that the scores of white kids are any more important than the scores of kids of color. It’s just that this is the only way to make use of the available demographic data. DPI does not report ACT scores broken down by economic categories, and for some Dane County high schools, white students are effectively the only ethnic category.

Here, ranked in order, are the 2007 average composite ACT scores for white students at the listed high schools, as reported by DPI:

2007 Average Composite ATC Score
(white students only)
1. West (5) 26.6
2. Memorial (10) 25.4
3. East (21) 25.0
4. Middleton (3) 24.6
5. McFarland (9) 24.4
6. Verona (8) 23.7
7. Shabazz (17) 23.5
8. Monona Grove (15) 23.4
8. Sun Prairie (12) 23.4
10. LaFollette (20) 23.3
10. Mt. Horeb (13) 23.3
10. WI Heights (11) 23.3
13. Waunakee (2) 23.1
14. Oregon (7) 22.9
15. DeForest (14) 22.6
16. Belleville (16) 22.4
17. Stoughton (19) 22.3
18. Deerfield (6) 21.8
19. Marshall (18) 20.5

Not surprisingly, West is again at the top of the heap, followed by Memorial. But how many would have guessed that East’s average ACT score for white students is higher than the comparable average of every suburban high school in Dane County?

One can draw one’s own conclusions from this. To me, this suggests what I have thought for awhile: The popular perceptions of our area high schools, fed by purveyors of conventional wisdom like Madison Magazine, tend to sorely undervalue the educational opportunities available to college-bound students in Madison’s public high schools as compared to what’s available in other public high schools in Dane County.

Life in the Carpool Lane

Annie Groer:

Four mothers armed with calendars and schedules huddled around a kitchen table in Vienna plotting how to get their children to and from Trinity School at Meadow View when classes start in two weeks.

Watts Riot (Green Dot Charter School)

Peter Beller:

On a sunny Los Angeles afternoon in early May, Steve Barr gathered with parents, teachers and other supporters across the street from Alain Locke Senior High School in the Watts neighborhood. He proudly declared to the news media that the 2,800-student school, one of the state's worst, was seceding from the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Green Dot, Barr's charter school operation, was ready to take over the school and pump up its abysmal graduation rate. A majority of Locke's tenured teachers had voted in secret to shuck their cozy union contracts and side with Barr. Standing next to him was Frank Wells, Locke's popular principal, fired two days earlier when district officials got wind of the takeover plan.

"So here the revolution starts, in Watts," Barr declared.

UW-Madison: Arts on Campus

K-12 Resources at the UW-Madison.

Teaching to the Test in Maryland

Joanne Jacobs:

But in pre-NCLB (No Child Left Behind) days, Tyler Heights students weren’t critical thinkers and creative writers: Only 17 percent passed the MSA in 2000. Many went on to fail in middle school and drop out of high school.

Principal Tina McKnight, a fanatically hard-working woman, started the turnaround in 2000. Superintendent Eric Smith brought in Saxon Math and Open Court, a phonics-first reading curriculum that tells teachers — often inexperienced — exactly what to say.

Because it has so many poor students, Tyler Heights gets extra funding to pay for very small classes and a variety of pullout programs for students who aren't doing well. Half the third-grade class receives some kind of special help.

District SLC Grant - Examining the Data From Earlier Grants, pt. 3

Because the recent MMSD Small Learning Communities (SLC) grant submission failed to include any discussion of the success or failure of the SLC initiatives already undertaken at Memorial and West High Schools, I have been examining the data that was (or in some cases should have been) provided to the Department of Education in the final reports of those previous grants. Earlier postings have examined the data from Memorial and the academic achievement data at West. It is now time to turn our attention to the data on Community and Connection, the other major goal of the West SLC grant.

West's SLC grant, which ran from 2003/04 to 2005/06 (and highlighted in the tables below), targeted 6 goals in the area of increasing community and connection amongst their students.

• 2.a. Suspension and Expulsion data
  
• 2.b. Safe and Supportive Climate
  
• 2.c. Stakeholder Perceptions
  
• 2.d. Extracurricular Participation
  
• 2.e. Student Leadership
  
• 2.f. Parent Participation

The available data suggest that West's restructuring has not had the anticipated effect on these measures. While I have been more than skeptical about the impact of the SLC restructuring on academic performance, I did expect that there would be positive changes in school climate, so I am surprised and disappointed at the data.

2.a. Suspension and Expulsion data -The final report claims that "Progress has been made overall for both suspensions and expulsions at West High." We reach a very different conclusion when we examine the data available from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI). I don't know what to make of the large discrepancies in the numbers reported by West in their final report and those on the DPI website (West reports a much higher number of suspensions), but I am inclined to believe that the data DPI collected from the District is the data we should rely on. That data shows that number of students suspended and more importantly the percentage of students suspended has actually increased over the time course of the SLC grant. Note that percentages are the more appropriate statistic to examine because they take into account the number of students enrolled which has declined over this period of time.

	Total Suspensions West Final Report	Total Suspensions DPI WINSS Data	Suspensions (% of Students) DPI WINSS Data	African Am. Suspensions West Final Report	African Am. Suspensions DPI WINSS Data	African Am. Suspensions (% of Students) DPI WINSS Data
2000/01	280	189	9.0%	100	71	23.1%
2001/02	265	154	7.3%	145	82	26.0%
2002/03	230	142	6.6%	115	71	24.0%
2003/04	255	142	6.7%	147	79	27.6%
2004/05	160	159	7.5%	90	89	28.1%
2005/06	not reported	181	8.9%	not reported	98	34.6%

Examining the suspension data on the DPI website revealed that the increases in the suspension rates amongst West High students were particularly pronounced for 9th and 10th grade students - the students specifically targeted by the SLC restructuring and implementation of a core curriculum.

Suspension Data for 9th & 10th Graders

	9th Grade Suspensions	10th Grade Suspensions
2000/01	13.1%	8.5%
2001/02	9.9%	9.3%
2002/03	10.2%	6.4%
2003/04	11.0%	9.3%
2004/05	11.3%	9.9%
2005/06	14.8%	10.1%

2.b. Safe and Supportive Climate - This goal was supposed to be assessed by examining changes in ratings of physical and emotional safety and school connected-ness on the District climate survey. Although climate data is supposedly collected from students each year, this data is not presented in West's Final Report. However, information presented in the recent MMSD proposal suggests that there haven't been any changes at West. In that proposal, it is noted that 53% of West students agreed with the statement "I am an important part of my school community." This percentage is essentially unchanged from the 52% of students in 2001/02 whom West said reported feeling attached to their school, when the school applied for their initial SLC grant.

2.c. Stakeholder Perceptions - Two types of data were to be examined: There were supposed to be student, staff, and parent surveys developed during Year 1 of the grant. The only survey data presented in the Final Report is an examination of staff survey data (as a parent, I never saw any parent survey). While the report notes the majority of survey items that had increases in positive responses from 2004 to 2006, there was also a significant decline in the number of staff responding to the survey, and this subject attrition leads one to wonder if there has been a change in staff perception over time or if those staff who did not support the grant simply decided not to respond. The report notes that 90 staff members responded in 2004 and only 60 responded in 2006. This 1/3 reduction in the number of respondents is even more striking when you consider that West had 238 staff members listed in its directory for 2006/07, so we have gone from a response rate of less than 50% to a rate of just above 25%.

The second type of data used to examine this goal was the number of police calls to West High, and the Final Report notes that "trends are positive" I don't have access to Madison Police Department data for the entire period of the grant. However, police department data available on the Madison Parents' School Safety Site indicates that there were 80 police calls to West during the Fall 2006 semester alone, much higher than the 60 reported in the Final Report for the entire 2005/06 school year.

2.d. Extracurricular Participation - While the Final Report notes that "Overall, student leadership and participation in extra or non-academic activities, two goals of the SLC initiative at West and both important for affiliation with the school, seem to have been enhanced by the One Lunch, Advisory, and Resource Hall restructuring.," no actual numbers are reported.

2.e. Student Leadership - Evidence of student leadership was supposed to be the number of student leadership opportunities at West. As noted above, no data is presented to support the claim that the number of these opportunities have changed.

2.f. Parent Participation - This was supposed to be examined by analyzing the percentage of parents of color who attended school functions. There is no mention of this data, in fact, there is no mention of this goal, in the Final Report. Anecdotally, I can report that over the last 3 years of PTSO meetings there have not been any noticible increases in the number of parents of color in attendance.

As a statistician and as a social scientist, I want to say that I am appalled by the quality of the data that has been assembled to support the contention that the restructuring at Memorial and West has produced the desired changes in student achievement or in school "connected-ness." I don't see any evidence that leads me to believe that the current SLC grant proposal will be any more successful.

After School Activities Declining

Sarah Carr:

During Rick Xiong's first two years at Milwaukee's Madison High School, his habit was to "go to school and get back home as fast as possible."

Sometimes Xiong, now a 19-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, would hear about after-school activities advertised during the morning announcements. But they never enticed him to stay.

As another school year approaches, many of the extracurricular activities that have long interested Milwaukee students are relics of the past. Although there are notable exceptions, gone are the days when city high schools had an array of sports, a drama club, a school musical, a band, an orchestra, a choir, an active yearbook and an assortment of other organizations.

The gap in test scores and graduation rates between the city and suburban high schools has attracted the most attention from policy-makers and the media in recent years. But others worry that there's another gap that's just as meaningful: the difference in the richness and breadth of the high school experience available to children in cities and suburbs as urban districts slice after-school activities and clubs.

US Drops Out of International Math & Science Study (TIMMS)

Peg Tyre:

Americans took note when Bill Gates said last spring that American schools needed to beef up science and math standards if the country was going to maintain a competitive edge in the new century. So did Congress, which last week approved legislation called the America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science) Act, which carves out a whopping $43.6 billion for science education and research.

So why did the federal government quietly decide last year to drop out of an international study that would compare U.S. high-school students who take advanced science and math courses with their international counterparts?

The study, called TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) Advanced 2008, measures how high-school seniors are doing in algebra, geometry, calculus and physics with students taking similar subjects around the globe. In the past, the American results have been shockingly poor. In the last survey, taken in 1995, students from only two countries—Cyprus and South Africa—scored lower than U.S. school kids.

Joanne has more.

The Case for Pre-K

Sara Mead:

A new book explains why other progressive causes should take some cues from the preschool movement.

In 1961, 13 three- and four-year-olds from poor black families began attending a preschool class at Perry Elementary School in Ypsilanti, Michigan. They were there as much to learn as to teach. A team of researchers followed not only their time at the preschool, but their trajectory over the next four decades, and the findings were startling:

Compared to a control group of similar children who didn't attend preschool, this class from Perry Elementary School would be less likely to skip class, be placed in special education, or wind up in jail. They'd be more likely to graduate high school and college and have a job, and would earn more money than their non-preschool peers. And, 40 years later, their successes would launch a national movement to ensure all children the opportunity to attend and benefit from the same type of high-quality preschool they had.

The movement to expand publicly funded preschool education is perhaps the most ambitious, promising, and fundamentally progressive campaign in public education today. Its members want, first, to make an additional year or two of publicly funded education available to all four- and three-year-olds whose parents want it -- an enormous step, representing a potential 15 percent expansion in the time children spend in public education. And at this, they're succeeding: 950,000 children currently attend state-funded preschool programs, and the number of four-year-olds attending such programs has risen 40 percent in the past five years alone.

Finding the equation for math education

Minnesota Public Radio:

While the math scores in the recently released Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments-Series II are slightly higher than last year's scores, they're still not very encouraging. Midday explores what these scores mean for math education, how students learn math and the state of our math curriculum?

GUESTS
Ken Vos: professor of education at the College of St. Catherine

Karen Teff: Deer River math teacher

In Hong Kong, Flashy Tutors Gain Icon Status

Jonathan Cheng:

When Richard Eng isn't teaching English grammar to high-school students, he might be cruising around Hong Kong in his Lamborghini Murciélago. Or in Paris, on one of his seasonal shopping sprees. Or relaxing in his private, custom-installed karaoke room festooned with giant Louis Vuitton logos.

Mr. Eng, 43 years old, is one of Hong Kong's best-known celebrity "tutor gods."

Hong Kong parents are often desperate to help their children succeed in this city's pressure-cooker public-examination system, which determines students' college-worthiness. That explains why many are willing to pay handsomely for extracurricular help. Mr. Eng and others like him have made a lucrative business out of tapping that demand. They use flashy, aggressive marketing tactics that have transformed them into scholastic pop stars -- "tutor gods," as they're known in Cantonese.

Private tutoring is big business around the world. Programs that help people prepare for standardized tests -- such as SAT-prep courses in the U.S. -- have become a multibillion-dollar industry. Tutoring agencies are also booming in places like mainland China and Japan. Several years ago, Hong Kong's government estimated that the city's families spent nearly half a billion dollars a year on tutoring.

Hong Kong stands out, though, for instructors who boldly tout their success rate -- and their own images. They pay to have their faces plastered throughout the city on 40-foot-high billboards and the sides of double-decker buses. They're also known for buying ads that take up the entire front page of newspapers -- space more commonly filled by banks and property developers. One local television station is even preparing to launch a fictional drama series based on the lives of the tutor gods.

Fascinating

MMSD Misses Notification Date, Will Again Provide Private School Bus Rides

Anita Clark:

The Madison School District said Tuesday it will provide bus rides for children attending private schools this year because it missed a legal deadline to notify families that the service was ending.

Hoping to save about $229,000, the School Board voted last spring to abolish bus routes that carried 208 children to six Catholic schools.

Instead, the district would pay their parents a transportation subsidy of about $450 per student.

The district has been working this summer with the Catholic Diocese of Madison to help it set up an alternative transportation system, but it did not realize there was an Aug. 4 deadline for notifying parents affected by the change, Superintendent Art Rainwater said Tuesday.

"We were so engrossed, it just went by us, " he said. "The statute is very clear and we did not meet it. "

Michael Lancaster, superintendent of schools for the diocese, said he 's happy that children will be receiving safe rides to school.

"Safety was a h