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July 31, 2008

How I Got Here: Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

Dennis Nishi:

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey grew up with two parents who were also opinionated doctors that often brought work into their Seattle home. She followed their lead, and upon graduating from Harvard University, began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. Her specialty: geriatrics. She later chaired several federal advisory committees including a White House task force on healthcare reform. Today she is the first African-American – and the first woman -- to head the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest philanthropy dedicated to health care in the U.S. Despite a full schedule, she also practices medicine at a community health clinic in New Jersey. Writer Dennis Nishi spoke with Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey about her career path. Edited excerpts follow.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at 10:33 AM Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas

Time to Eliminate Taj Mahal School Building Projects

Open Education:

As education expenses continue to grow, strapped taxpayers have begun pushing back on state and local governments. In the tiny State of Maine, many school districts are finding that passing a school budget for the upcoming school year a sincere challenge.

Even the tiny town of Monmouth, home to one of Maine’s finest public school systems, has seen such a rebellion, leaving school officials without a school budget for 2008-09. With another school year set to begin in less than a month’s time, Monmouth finds itself in an extremely challenging position.

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The Biggest Issue

David Brooks:

Why did the United States become the leading economic power of the 20th century? The best short answer is that a ferocious belief that people have the power to transform their own lives gave Americans an unparalleled commitment to education, hard work and economic freedom.

Between 1870 and 1950, the average American’s level of education rose by 0.8 years per decade. In 1890, the average adult had completed about 8 years of schooling. By 1900, the average American had 8.8 years. By 1910, it was 9.6 years, and by 1960, it was nearly 14 years.

As Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz describe in their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology,” America’s educational progress was amazingly steady over those decades, and the U.S. opened up a gigantic global lead. Educational levels were rising across the industrialized world, but the U.S. had at least a 35-year advantage on most of Europe. In 1950, no European country enrolled 30 percent of its older teens in full-time secondary school. In the U.S., 70 percent of older teens were in school.

In “Schools, Skills and Synapses,” Heckman probes the sources of that decline. It’s not falling school quality, he argues. Nor is it primarily a shortage of funding or rising college tuition costs. Instead, Heckman directs attention at family environments, which have deteriorated over the past 40 years.

Related:

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Michigan High-School Students Will Have Increased Chances to Develop Science and Engineering Skills

Business Wire:

To help meet the economic and business challenges ahead and retain Michigan's position as the state with the highest percentage of engineers in the nation, Michigan high-school students will get significantly increased chances to develop critically needed engineering, science and math skills in 2009, thanks to a restructuring of the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) in Michigan.

"Although it is impossible to predict the future, including the economic opportunities and challenges Michigan may face, it is clear that to re-energize our economy we need more than a favorable business tax environment and financial incentives alone," said Bloomfield, Mich. resident and FIRST in Michigan Director, Francois Castaing.

"We need a steady flow of new engineers and technicians who will help existing and new industries tackle international competition and environmental challenges," he continued. "Michigan needs the next Larry Page to start another Google or to invent a new fuel from crab grass."

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July 30, 2008

History Books

Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
29 July 2008


Katherine Kersten tells me that at Providence Academy in Plymouth, Minnesota, high school history students are required to read James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom [946 pages] and Paul Johnson’s History of the American People [1,104 pages] in their entirety.

It seems likely to me that when these students get to college and find reading lists in their courses in History, Political Science, Economics, and the like, which require them to read nonfiction books, they will be somewhat ready for them, having read at least two serious nonfiction books in their Lower Education years.

For the vast majority of our public secondary students this may not be the case. As almost universally, the assignment of reading and writing is left up to the English departments in the high schools, most students now read only novels and other fiction.

While the National Endowment for the Arts has conducted a $300,000 study of the pleasure reading habits of young people and others, no foundation or government agency, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, has show an interest in asking whether our secondary students read one complete nonfiction book before graduation and if so, what book would it be?

Although I studied English literature at Harvard and later at Cambridge University, and I still find the reading of novels a pleasure, in the last thirty years most of my reading has been in history, and I am greatly puzzled by the apparent willingness of Edupundits and educators to leave all assignments of complete books in the hands of the English Departments.

When our students reach Higher Education, they can no longer rely on their ability to read novels alone. They will be expected to manage fairly serious nonfiction books, in history and in their other courses. How did we decide to leave them so unprepared to do that?

Of course, fiction, poetry and drama may be the focus of concern for the National Endowment for the Arts, but would not the reading of history books in the schools be a focus of interest for the National Endowment for the Humanities? So far, apparently not.

Somehow a consensus has emerged that high school students do not need to be assigned complete nonfiction books and that the History or Social Studies Departments may confine their homework to short readings and readings in a textbook. Have we decided, for some odd reason, that the work of historians is perhaps too difficult for our high school students? They may be capable of studying Calculus, Latin, Chemistry and Chinese, but a work by David McCullough, for example, is judged to be beyond their ability to read or understand?

I realize that English is required every year in high school and that Social Studies Departments have in some cases almost completely cut their ties to the field of History, but even in the other Social Studies there are complete nonfiction books which could be assigned. But it appears that they are not.

The high schools are at fault, of course, for not encouraging or requiring teachers to assign serious complete nonfiction books as a preparation for Higher Education and for good jobs, but why have our Edpundits, Eduscholars, and University Professors, of Education and other disciplines, been so indifferent and so careless as to have no curiosity about whether our high school students are reading one nonfiction book before graduation or not.

If our students were taking no math courses, or science courses, or language courses, or literature courses, there would surely be concern and studies and the like. But if our students come to think that all books are novels, as many now do, and graduate quite unprepared to take on a serious nonfiction book, as they now are, no one seems to notice or to mind.

I have no children, but if I did, I would certainly want them to attend a secondary school like Providence Academy, in Plymouth, Minnesota, which would introduce them to at least a few great history books before they graduate, and I wish that those who do have children in high school could now have that opportunity in much greater numbers.

“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®

Posted by Will Fitzhugh at 9:09 AM Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas

Kalamazoo's lesson: Educate and they will come

Jeff Bennett:

More than a year ago, Kaiser Aluminum Corp. was looking for a spot to build an $80 million office-and-research center that would employ 150 workers.

After considering cities in three different states, the maker of aluminum products settled on Kalamazoo, Mich., a once-prosperous manufacturing city that had lost thousands of jobs in the last decade or so.

One of the draws: The Kalamazoo Promise, a program that provides at least partial college tuition to all graduating seniors who spent their high-school years in the city's public schools.

Just as Kaiser was gearing up its search, a group of wealthy philanthropists who have remained anonymous unveiled the Promise as a gift to the city. The lure of the program as a benefit for Kaiser employees, and its potential to produce a highly educated work force, proved a big attraction, says Martin Carter, vice president and general manager of common alloy products at Foothill Ranch, Calif.-based Kaiser.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:33 AM Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas

July 29, 2008

The Greatest Scandal

Wall Street Journal Editorial:

The profound failure of inner-city public schools to teach children may be the nation's greatest scandal. The differences between the two Presidential candidates on this could hardly be more stark. John McCain is calling for alternatives to the system; Barack Obama wants the kids to stay within that system. We think the facts support Senator McCain.

"Parents ask only for schools that are safe, teachers who are competent and diplomas that open doors of opportunity," said Mr. McCain in remarks recently to the NAACP. "When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children." Some parents may opt for a better public school or a charter school; others for a private school. The point, said the Senator, is that "no entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity."

Mr. McCain cited the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program, a federally financed school-choice program for disadvantaged kids signed into law by President Bush in 2004. Qualifying families in the District of Columbia receive up to $7,500 a year to attend private K-12 schools. To qualify, a child must live in a family with a household income below 185% of the poverty level. Some 1,900 children participate; 99% are black or Hispanic. Average annual income is just over $22,000 for a family of four.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at 10:33 AM Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas

Hearing scheduled on English education Funding

Paul Davenport:

A federal judge in Phoenix has scheduled a wide-ranging November hearing on the adequacy and funding of Arizona's programs for educating students who are learning English.

In the meantime, U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins on Friday left intact a state mandate that school districts begin using a new instructional model that many districts contend is inadequately funded.

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Milwaukee-area high schools strive for Newsweek ranking

Amy Hetzner:

Few could call Milwaukee’s Rufus King High School shy about divulging how it stacks up on Newsweek magazine’s annual report on the nation’s best public high schools.

"Newsweek: Top-Ranked School in Wisconsin" blares the headline on the school's Web site, with a link to the magazine's site and a rundown on how Rufus King has topped other Wisconsin schools in previous years of comparisons.

This honor distinguishes the school, Rufus King Principal Marie Newby-Randle says in a written statement on the Web site, and it proves its students "are truly among the brightest and the best."

Colleges have their U.S. News & World Report rankings.

American high schools have the Challenge Index.

The only Madison area high school to make the list was Verona at #808.

Related: Dane County, WI AP Course Offerings.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at 7:25 AM Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas

Changed lives

Patrick McIlheran:

Ahmad Hattix looks preoccupied as he is about to be relaunched.

It could be because he has spectators - his father, his fiancée, young children bouncing around in a hallway at Gateway Technical College in Racine, where he's about to graduate. Maybe he's just eager to get moving.

Which happens. People assemble around tables, officials speak, men come up to receive certificates. Hattix, now smiling, makes several trips, as he has not only graduated but has earned some other honors. He is a changed man.

Hattix has been changed by technical education, by Gateway's "boot camp" in the sort of high-end computerized metalworking called CNC machining. Hattix, 31, of Racine has a prison record and practically no job experience. But thanks to the boot camp, he has bright prospects. As of his graduation July 18, he already has a job offer in Kenosha.

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Why I Am a TV Loser

Jay Matthews:

Compton is a successful high-tech entrepreneur who made himself into an first-rate polemicist. His one-hour documentary film, "Two Million Minutes," pushes our most sensitive cultural buttons. He argues that kids in India and China are studying much harder than U.S. students. In the film he chronicles two fun-loving teens in Carmel, Ind., an affluent Indianapolis suburb, and shows how little attention they pay to their homework compared to two students of similar age in China and two in India.

I interviewed Compton and responded to his film twice, in a Feb. 11 column and in a piece in the spring issue of the Wilson Quarterly. I confessed I, too, was distressed to see, in his film, Carmel High's Brittany Brechbuhl watching "Grey's Anatomy" on television with her friends while they were allegedly doing their math homework. I said I agreed we had to fix our high schools, not because of the threat of international competition but to end the shame of having millions of low-income students drop out and fail to get the education they deserve. I said I admired Compton's consistency in insisting that his daughters spend more time on their studies just as he wants all American teens to do.

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July 28, 2008

California school districts ending or reducing bus service for students

Seema Mehta:

Thousands more California students will have to find their own way to school this fall, as districts slash bus routes to cope with budget shortfalls and high fuel costs.

Critics worry that the cuts will increase traffic around schools, shift costs to parents already struggling with rising gas prices and prompt more absenteeism, hurting students' academic achievement. But paramount is the fear that the reductions will endanger students as more walk or drive to school.

"All the parents, we've been scrambling to try to work out carpools," said Wayne Tate, whose second-grader's bus to Castille Elementary, two miles from their home in Mission Viejo, was eliminated. "For somebody that young, that's a pretty long way to walk or ride a bike. All you need is one kid getting hit to realize that maybe the [savings] wasn't worth it."

Districts say they have no choice.

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Out of Sight

Pamela Colloff:

For the 140 students lucky enough to attend the Texas School for the Blind, life is about team sports, class plays, American Idol parties, and prom night. In fact, it’s the one place where they can see themselves for who they really are: typical teenagers.

Three days before the prom at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, I stopped by House 573, a small girls’ dormitory on the school’s campus, in Austin. Tammy Reed, House 573’s sturdy, perpetually good-natured dorm manager—beloved for, among other things, her Tuesday night American Idol viewing parties, which include running commentary and hot wings—was telling me why the prom was the most thrilling night of the year for her girls. “Blind students usually don’t get asked to the prom,” she said as we sat at the kitchen table, which had been taken over by curling irons, cans of hair spray, bobby pins, Q-tips, nail polish, and costume jewelry. “And if they go to the prom, they end up standing against the wall. Everyone comes to our prom, and there won’t be a kid there who doesn’t dance.”

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In Cambodia, learning the lessons of graft

Don Lee:

Before leaving for Chompovon Primary School on the outskirts of the capital, students say, their parents give them 10 to 15 cents of pocket money. That's enough to buy some breakfast cakes and rice -- and pay their teachers a few cents before they walk into class.

The fee, a widespread practice in Cambodia's public schools, is a kind of informal toll that students must pay. If they don't, parents say, they risk receiving a lower grade or even being demoted.

Here, schoolchildren are taught at an early age what it takes to get ahead. And it only gets worse as they grow up. At every turn, Cambodians pay under the table: for a birth certificate, a travel visa, a fair ruling from a judge.

Transparency International, a corruption-fighting organization based in Berlin, says the majority of Cambodia's public servants earn their living by collecting bribes.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at 9:43 AM Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas

The Final Bell:
Is closing an underperforming high school part of the solution to what ails our public education system—or part of the problem?

Paul Burka:

Seven years ago, I watched my daughter, Janet, receive her diploma from Johnston High School, in East Austin. No parent will ever do that again: In June, Johnston ceased to exist. A few days before this year’s graduation ceremony, Texas education commissioner Robert Scott informed the Austin Independent School District that he was invoking the nuclear option authorized by the Texas Education Code to close the school after five consecutive years of “academically unacceptable” performances on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test. Scores improved this year, but not enough to save the school. State rules mandate that three fourths of Johnston’s teachers and half of its students be reassigned when the 2008—2009 academic year begins (some students and teachers can opt to remain at the current campus, which will be “repurposed”). The Johnston name will be expunged, and AISD must produce a plan for some sort of educational triage.

I was saddened to read about Johnston’s fate—but not surprised. For almost two years I had served on its campus advisory council (CAC) with other parents, teachers, administrators, and representatives of the community. I knew Johnston’s problems all too well. In one of my first meetings, we learned that 50 percent of the freshman class had failed all four core courses (English, math, science, social studies) the previous year. In an educational environment dominated by high-stakes testing, Johnston got the black mark, but the roots of the problem reached back into the elementary and middle schools that had failed to prepare their students for high school.

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July 27, 2008

Big change for welfarist Sweden: School choice

Malin Rising:

Schools run by private enterprise? Free iPods and laptop computers to attract students?

It may sound out of place in Sweden, that paragon of taxpayer-funded cradle-to-grave welfare. But a sweeping reform of the school system has survived the critics and 16 years later is spreading and attracting interest abroad.

"I think most people, parents and children, appreciate the choice," said Bertil Ostberg, from the Ministry of Education. "You can decide what school you want to attend and that appeals to people."

Since the change was introduced in 1992 by a center-right government that briefly replaced the long-governing Social Democrats, the numbers have shot up. In 1992, 1.7 percent of high schoolers and 1 percent of elementary schoolchildren were privately educated. Now the figures are 17 percent and 9 percent.
In some ways the trend mirrors the rise of the voucher system in the U.S., with all its pros and cons. But while the percentage of children in U.S. private schools has dropped slightly in recent years, signs are that the trend in Sweden is growing.

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Woman to coach Fennimore varsity boys

Tyler Mason:

When Allison Meyer was a forward on the Fennimore High School girls basketball team in the mid-1990s, all eyes were on her. On her way to winning all-conference honors her sophomore through senior seasons, Meyer 's play turned quite a few heads.

Now, she 's back at her alma mater turning heads again -- for a different reason.

Earlier this summer, the 29-year-old Meyer was named Fennimore boys varsity basketball coach. She will replace Mark Fifrick, who stepped down after 12 seasons.

Fifrick approached Meyer -- who coached the school 's junior varsity boys team the past two years -- and encouraged her to go after the job.

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OSU to sponsor proposed Tulsa charter school

April Marciszewski:

Oklahoma State University has agreed to sponsor a proposed charter high school in Tulsa that would recruit juniors and seniors from across the state to study arts and other subjects "through the lens of art," as leaders described it.

The Oklahoma School for the Visual and Performing Arts is still seeking the Legislature's approval to create the school and to fund about $5 million annually for operations, said David Downing, the school's co-chairman with his father-in-law, John Brock, a retired Tulsa oilman and philanthropist.

Leaders plan to raise $20 million in private donations to pay for land, buildings and equipment, Downing said.

The school would be the artistic equivalent of the Ok-lahoma School for Science and Mathematics in Oklahoma City.

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Dear Parents: Please Relax, It's Just Camp

Tina Kelley:

A dozen 9-year-old girls in jelly-bean-colored bathing suits were learning the crawl at Lake Bryn Mawr Camp one recent morning as older girls in yellow and green camp uniforms practiced soccer, fused glass in the art studio or tried out the climbing wall.

Their parents, meanwhile, were bombarding the camp with calls: one wanted help arranging private guitar lessons for her daughter, another did not like the sound of her child’s voice during a recent conversation, and a third needed to know — preferably today — which of her daughter’s four varieties of vitamins had run out. All before lunch.

Answering these and other urgent queries was Karin Miller, 43, a stay-at-home mother during the school year with a doctorate in psychology, who is redefining the role of camp counselor. She counsels parents, spending her days from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. printing out reams of e-mail messages to deliver to Bryn Mawr’s 372 female campers and leaving voice mail messages for their parents that always begin, "Nothing’s wrong, I’m just returning your call."

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On Superintendent Leadership

PBS Newshour:

An ongoing series takes a look at Paul Vallas in New Orleans and Michelle Rhee in Washington, DC.

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July 26, 2008

Will West High School's Tierney Chamberlain "Get In the Picture"?

West High School senior Tierney Chamberlain is one of six East Coast finalists in the reality-t.v. show "High School Musical: Get In the Picture." Watch the performance that moved her from semi-finalist to finalist.

As many of you surely know, Tierney has a huge and amazing voice. Check out this 2006 video of her singing the national anthem. Tierney was last seen in the role of Cassie in West's spring, 2008, production of "A Chorus Line."

Tierney, our hats are off to you back here in Madison, not just at West, but all over town. You are an AMAZING talent. We're rooting for you all the way!

Posted by Laurie Frost at 12:25 PM Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas

Greater Rome Chamber of Commerce supports education sales tax

Bryant Steele:

The board of directors of the Greater Rome Chamber of Commerce voted unanimously Thursday to support the third phase of the special purpose, local option sales tax for education.

Floyd County citizens will go to the polls on Sept. 16 to vote on SPLOST III.

“Rome and Floyd County have a commitment to offering superior educational opportunities for our children,” said Randy Quick, chairman of the Chamber board and general manager of South 107. “Education is often identified by current employers as necessary to their continuation of business.”

Quick said prospective businesses and industries exploring expansion and relocation to Rome and Floyd County look at the educational opportunities offered.

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Attention all faculty and staff: The principal is out of the building. Again.

Ray Cox:

I thoroughly enjoy working for my principal. He's a great guy, has a no-nonsense approach to dealing with discipline and doesn't try to micromanage the staff. He's not perfect (e.g. he still requires me to wear a tie), but after reading all of the comments about other principals, he does an outstanding job. That said, I would very much enjoy to see him more at school, not off at DISD-mandated principals' meetings.

Now, I don't know the exact number he has gone to meetings across Dallas, but it's often more than once a week, and usually half a day or longer. He tries to make it every morning, give the announcements, meet with parents, etc., but then he's off in a flash to learn about some new initiative, see how our OHI scores are faring, or TAKS test security guidelines. And when we hit the AYP list the first time, he was gone almost twice as much. I've yet to see the man take a day off and I wonder how he maintains his sanity sitting in meetings all the time.

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July 25, 2008

A TASTE OF WISCONSIN CULTURE BRINGS PROCEEDS TO THOSE IN NEED

Bulleh Bablitch:

Local brat/hot dog sale donates proceeds to Project Liberia

WHAT: A good ol’ fashioned Wisconsin cookout, complete with brats, hot dogs and soda,
will donate proceeds to Project Liberia , a burgeoning non-profit organization, dedicated to helping children and families in Liberia , West Africa recover from a devastating civil war.

WHEN: Saturday, July 26 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m.

WHERE: Super Wal-Mart 2101 Royal Ave., Monona

WHO: Supporters of Project Liberia and Sports for Africa

WHY: Project Liberia is a collection of individual programs designed to meet some of
the most pressing needs for a nation recovering from a devastating civil war. Each venture — from building a community center, developing a micro-loan system and bringing sports equipment to children in villages and orphanages — has been developed to enhance the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual fiber of the people of Liberia. 501(c)(3) status pending.
Bulleh Bablitch, Project Liberia, Inc. 608-577-6711

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Who's better at math? Subtract gender

Emily Johns:

Scores from 7 million students nationwide show that girls and boys do equally well on tests. But Minnesota's high school girls still lag.

When it comes to math scores, high school girls are measuring up, reports a national study challenging the persistent notion that boys are naturally better with numbers.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison study released Thursday in the journal Science reported that, overall, U.S. girls and boys got equal math scores, from second through 11th grades. The results of the study, the largest of its kind, represented marked improvement over a 1990 study showing measurable differences in complex problem-solving, starting in high school.

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In Memory of Randy Pausch ...

"Last Lecture" Professor Randy Pausch, 47, Dies

Tara Parker-Pope
The New York Times

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon computer science professor whose last lecture became an Internet sensation and bestselling book, has died of pancreatic cancer. He was 47.

Dr. Pausch, whose proudest professional achievement was creating a free computer programming tool for children called Alice, was an improbable celebrity. A self-professed nerd, he pushed his students to create virtual reality projects, celebrated the joy of amusement parks and even spent a brief stint as a Disney “Imagineer.'’

Last September, Dr. Pausch unexpectedly stepped on an international stage when he addressed a crowd of about 400 faculty and students at Carnegie Mellon as part of the school’s “Last Lecture” series. In the talks, professors typically talk about issues that matter most to them. Dr. Pausch opened his talk with the news that he had terminal cancer and proceeded to deliver an uplifting, funny talk about his own childhood dreams and how to help his children and others achieve their own goals in life. He learned he had pancreatic cancer in September, 2006.

Sitting in the audience was Carnegie Mellon alumnus Jeff Zaslow, a columnist with The Wall Street Journal, who wrote about the speech. Media outlets and bloggers linked to the story, and more than 10 million people have since watched an Internet video of the talk. The lecture was translated into seven languages, and Hyperion published a book version that became a New York Times bestseller.

I was fortunate to meet Dr. Pausch this spring and was amazed by his boyish good nature and optimistic outlook even in the face of death. During an April interview near his home in Virginia, he called the furor surrounding his lecture “a ridiculous chain of coincidental luck.'’

“I was thrilled because my whole life anything I could do to get Carnegie Mellon some well-deserved exposure, I always felt compelled to do,'’ he said.

But, he added, he never expected so many people to tune in to his advice about letting kids paint on their walls and win stuffed animals at amusement parks. “I didn’t set out to tell the world about how to live their life,'’ he said.

Dr. Pausch died early today at his home in Virginia. Although Dr. Pausch was famous for his poignant, frank discussion of his impending death, he was also aggressive about seeking treatments that could prolong his life and the time he had left to spend with his wife, Jai, and their three children. A lifetime problem solver, Dr. Pausch was determined to help his wife and children cope with his death. “I haven’t found a way to clever my way out of it,'’ he told me.

Although cancer and his last lecture helped make him a celebrity, Dr. Pausch said much in his life was the same as always.

“Cancer didn’t change me at all,'’ he said. “I know lots of people talk about the life revelation. I didn’t have that. I always thought every day was a gift, but now I am looking for where to send the thank you note.'’

On the Well blog, Dr. Pausch first gave us “Words to Live By,'’ followed by a fun contest that led to advice for our kids. Most recently, he gave us “A Lesson on How to Say Goodbye” and talked about “Keeping Priorities Straight, Even at the End.”


Randy Pausch's homepage.

Posted by Laurie Frost at 1:27 PM Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas

The Odd World of E-School Teachers

Ian Shapira:

For Trinity Wilbourn, teaching high school via the Internet offers a heartening and maddening prism into the teenage mind-set.

Sitting one day at her home office overlooking a golf course, the Prince William County teacher received a snarky comment in all capital letters from a devil-may-care summer school student. But the next moment, she marveled at another male student's frank e-mail: "[W]hen I first went to high school, I did not know who I was for awhile. . . . I tried being someone I could not be."

"I feel like, what kind of guy is going to say that out loud in his class?" Wilbourn said.

Educators who supplement or replace their day jobs with online teaching for local public schools are discovering that the perks of working at home come with hurdles: grappling with awkward or confusing lines of communication with their pupils; gauging student performance without seeing facial expressions; and struggling to withstand the urge to check e-mails from students during weekends.

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Madison rapped for preschool gap

Bill Lueders:

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick says the case could spur the Madison school district to offer 4-year-old kindergarten and amp up its assistance to dozens of families.

"My clients can afford preschool," says Spitzer-Resnick, an attorney with Disability Rights Wisconsin, a nonprofit public-interest law firm. "The people who most need help and most stand to benefit are the ones who can’t."

Spitzer-Resnick is representing the parents of a 4-year-old special needs child. A district evaluation in mid-2007 determined that the child qualified for special education services, as is mandated for 3- and 4-year-olds by state and federal law.

But the Madison district does not offer 4-year-old kindergarten and has only nominal programming for kids in this category. And so the parents (whom Isthmus is not naming to protect their child’s privacy) asked Disability Rights Wisconsin to argue that the district must pay the costs of a private preschool they used as an alternative.

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Madison Referendum Climate: Local Property Tax Bite & Entitlements

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial: "Tame State's Tax Bite on Homes":

The poor rating should serve as yet another warning to state and local leaders not to jack up this worst-of-all tax even higher. It also should energize groups such as The Wisconsin Way, which is brainstorming for creative and fair ways to reduce our state 's property tax burden while growing our high-tech economy.

If anything, the Taxpayers Alliance ranking Tuesday minimized the pinch many Wisconsin homeowners feel. That 's because the group looked at the burden on all properties together -- homes, businesses, farms and other land.

If you single out just homes, a different study last year suggested Wisconsin property taxes rank No. 1 in the nation. The National Association of Home Builders compiled property tax rates on a median-valued home in each state. Only Wisconsin and Texas (which doesn 't have a state income tax) exceeded $18 per $1,000 of property value.

In its report Tuesday, the Taxpayers Alliance measured the property tax bite more broadly. It ranked states based on ability to pay. It found that Wisconsin 's property tax burden eats up about 4.4 percent of personal income here.

Mark Perry - "A Nation of Entitlements":
These middle class retirement programs, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, cost more than $1 trillion annually (about the same as the entire economic output of Canada, the 13th largest ecoomy in the world, see chart above), and will cause federal spending to jump by half, from 20% of the economy to 35% by 2035. This tsunami of spending is a major threat to limited government because it runs on auto-pilot with automatic increases locked in by each program’s governing laws. While other programs are constrained through annual budgets, entitlements get first call on resources. Other goals such as defense or national security must compete for an increasingly smaller share of what’s left.

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Danel Nerad, stop shutting out student input

Natalia Thompson:

A case in point: When a class of local elementary school students wrote emails to district officials last year expressing their disappointment over a canceled field trip, the district responded by reprimanding their teacher. (See "The Danger of Teaching Democracy," 2/7/08.) Apparently, Rainwater didn’t appreciate the teacher’s efforts to give her students a little civics lesson.

That’s not to say the district doesn’t listen to students at all. Each year, students complete a school climate survey, which gathers their opinions on the fairness of school policies and the effectiveness of support services.

But if students want to share what’s on their minds on their own terms? Forget it.

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D.C. Schools Chief Institutes Tough Changes, Weathers Controversy

John Merrow @ NewsHour:

JOHN MERROW: ... when she announced she would close the 23 chronically under-enrolled schools. Ongoing protests did not slow Rhee down. By the end of the school year, she had removed 36 principals, 22 assistant principals, and 121 employees in her central office.

She also revealed plans to overhaul 27 additional schools that had failed to meet federal standards for academic improvement.

MICHELLE RHEE: I'm proud of the fact that we have made some very difficult decisions that there was very vocal opposition to, that we stuck to our guns.

ADRIAN FENTY: We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make this school system excellent. And to the extent we can allow her to do that, as free from outside obstacles as humanly possible, the faster she will move.

JOHN MERROW: Last year, D.C. voted to dissolve the elected school board. Unlike her predecessors, Rhee reports to one person alone: the mayor.

Has he ever said no to you?

MICHELLE RHEE: No.

JOHN MERROW: Never?

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Texas schools with high dropouts get a break in state rankings

Terrence Stutz:

Texas schools with student dropout problems are getting a break in the state’s performance ratings this year – a move likely to spare dozens of school districts and campuses from being slapped with “academically unacceptable” ratings.

State Education Commissioner Robert Scott has decided to excuse schools that fail to meet minimum criteria under the new federal definition for dropouts as long as their passing rates for all student groups on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills are satisfactory.

The decision means that no school district or campus can receive an unacceptable rating solely for dropout or student completion rates that fall short of the federal standards.

Those standards basically require a high school completion rate of at least 75 percent and an annual dropout rate of no more than 1 percent of the students in grades 7 and 8. The current completion rate refers to the percentage of ninth graders from five years ago who graduated in the Class of 2007.

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July 24, 2008

A test used by business schools to help choose students is at the centre of a controversy

The Economist:

IT WOULD make great material for a business ethics course. In late June ScoreTop.com, a website that helped users prepare for the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), was shut down following allegations that it had published questions being used in current GMAT exam papers. The Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), the business-school body that created the test, intimated that test-takers’ scores might be cancelled if they had abused access to “live” questions (though the council later said it was concentrating on users who may have posted the offending material).

Ominous rumblings from GMAC sparked a flurry of virtual hand-wringing on websites and in the blogosphere. “As the site always maintained that all the questions are its own material there is not much a student can do”, complained one ScoreTop customer posting on BusinessWeek.com. Students are not the only ones fretting. A multi-million dollar industry of test-preparation publishers and training schools has grown up to help aspiring business moguls prepare for the GMAT and the ScoreTop scandal has caused consternation among its ranks. “These threats put users [of test-preparation materials] in a strange position,” wrote a GMAT trainer. “What do you do when sites tell you they have great practice material but you have no clue if its [sic] legal or not?”

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School Gets Funds To Open:
Achievement First Institution Is Considered Key To City’s School Reform

Jeffrey Cohen:

A charter school whose widely anticipated opening in Hartford was threatened by a lack of cash will open this school year, city officials said Tuesday.

City hall spokeswoman Sarah Barr said in a press release that the Achievement First charter school, run by the same group that operates the acclaimed Amistad Academy in New Haven, will open to 252 students "thanks to public and private support."

Barr, along with officials at the public school system and Achievement First, declined to say where the money for the school was coming from. A press conference is scheduled for this morning to announce the opening and the funding source.

"The plan is to announce that at tomorrow's press conference," Patricia Sweet, an Achievement First official, said Tuesday.

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Oakland Military Institute

Darren:

Earlier today I had the high privilege of visiting and being given a tour of the Oakland Military Institute, a charter school in the Oakland (California) School District. Summer school was in session so I did get to see some cadets, but I look forward to visiting again some time when the full student population is present--that's the only way to get a true feel for a school.

The school board and local teachers union were hostile to the creation of OMI from the very beginning; it was only the persistence of then-Mayor Jerry Brown (former CA governor, current attorney general), that allowed the school to get off the ground. For its first few years, OMI was located at the former Oakland Army Base. But that facility became needed, and OMI had to find a new home. There was a closed elementary school in a residential neighborhood...

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Ohio Governor's Conversation on Education

Ted Strickland:

In my State of the State address this year, I outlined six principles that will guide me as I draft my plan for education. We will follow these in pursuit of one clear standard: schools that rank among the best in the world and meet the needs of every Ohio child.

This is not an issue that can be fixed overnight. It involves a grassroots effort and collaboration among communities, governmental leaders and education stakeholders to develop a plan and put it into action.

That's why I'm holding regional meetings across Ohio. I want to give you the opportunity to vet proposed ideas for creating a system of education that is innovative, personalized and linked to economic prosperity.

As we conduct these conversations, I will engage parents and students, teachers and school administrators, business and community leaders, school board members, and education advocates across the state.

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Planned "Global School" A Positive Trend

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

Six school districts in Dane County are showing that when the going gets tough, the tough come up with smart ideas.

Administrators in the six districts hope to pool resources and work with Madison Area Technical College to offer courses in specialized skills that might not otherwise be possible.

The administrators hope to launch by 2010 what 's being called The Global Academy, a hybrid of career-related high school and college courses for high school juniors and seniors from the Verona, Middleton-Cross Plains, Belleville, McFarland, Mount Horeb and Oregon school districts.

Changing enrollments, higher expenses, taxpayer angst and the state 's faulty school financing system are making it harder for individual districts to provide as many courses or offer new ones.

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Forget credit; some students attend summer school to ace classes in fall

Stella Chavez:

Julie Chang is spending the summer learning calculus at a college prep school. In the fall, she's going to take calculus again, as a junior at Plano Senior High.

Her strategy is simple: Learn as much as possible about the subject over the summer so there's a good chance of acing the class when it really counts – during the school year.

And maybe she can reach her goal of being valedictorian for the Class of 2010

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L.A.'s Santee school to team up with Trade-Tech College

Gale Holland:

Mayor Villaraigosa announces a program to train students in culinary arts and tourism while they complete high school. The goal is to prepare them for both a career and further college education.

A $1.2-million program designed to curb galloping high school dropout rates will send Santee Education Complex students to Los Angeles Trade Technical College to train in culinary arts and tourism Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Tuesday.

Funded by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation,, the three-year program will combine college classes with hands-on work experience to produce graduating seniors who are both college-ready and qualified to join the workforce, officials said. Currently, nearly half of Santee's mostly low-income students drop out.

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July 23, 2008

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

William Deresiewicz:

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League dees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

It’s not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society’s most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable.

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All the privileged must have prize

John Summers:

The banality and sense of entitlement of rich students at Harvard left John H. Summers feeling his teaching had been degraded to little more than a service to prepare clients for monied careers

I joined the staff of the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University in 2000. As tutor, then as lecturer, I advised senior theses, conceived and conducted freshman and junior seminars and taught the year-long sophomore tutorial, Social Studies 10, six times. The fractured nature of my appointment, renewed annually for six successive years while never amounting to more than 65 per cent of a full-time position in any one year, kept me on the margins of prestige and promotion even as it kept me there long enough to serve three chairmen of social studies, two directors of study and three presidents of Harvard.

The post-pubescent children of notables for whom I found myself holding curricular responsibility included the offspring of an important political figure, of a player in the show business world and the son of real-estate developer Charles Kushner.

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Support Grows for Disabled Job Seekers

Suzanne Robitaille:

Lucy Shi, a job seeker who has a genetic condition that causes short stature, says she's happy to be singled out as a disability candidate as she hunts for a position in New York.

A graduate of New York University, Ms. Shi, 25, recently interviewed with several Wall Street firms at a recruiting event geared toward people with disabilities who aim to develop professional business careers. "It's hard to have a disability that's so visible, and it's just nice to be able to talk to recruiters without competing with the rest of the world," says Ms. Shi, who believes many interviewers view her as a child because of her height.

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100 Useful Reference Sites You’ve Never Heard Of

Laura Milligan:

Beyond Google, Wikipedia and other generic reference sites, the Internet boasts a multitude of search engines, dictionaries, reference desks and databases that have organized and archived information for quick and easy searches. In this list, we’ve compiled just 100 of our favorites, for teachers, students, hypochondriacs, procrastinators, bookworms, sports nuts and more.

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Schools & Unions: Learning their lesson - Can a teachers’ union be an engine for reform?

The Economist:

THE election on July 14th of Randi Weingarten as president marks a new era for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), or so the union says. For years teachers’ unions have been demonised as the main obstacles to school reform, often with good reason. Now the AFT is billing Ms Weingarten as a “reform-minded advocate”. With American students lagging, Ms Weingarten insists that “the union is the solution.” She has some convincing to do.

If any teachers’ union were to promote reform, it would be the AFT, America’s second-biggest. While the larger National Education Association has historically been less nimble, the AFT’s president from 1974 to 1997, Al Shanker, supported accountability and even some pay-for-performance schemes. (“I used to shy away from bribery,” he reportedly said, “but I’ve come to the conclusion that it has a place.”) Today the AFT supports such bonuses, if negotiated with a local union. It also represents teachers in more than 70 charter (publicly funded but self-governing) schools, in ten states.

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Jump In On Dropouts

Boston Globe Editorial:

DROPPING OUT of high school isn't just a teenager's personal problem. It's a loss for the Massachusetts economy, which needs educated workers.

Recognizing that schools can't single-handedly solve this problem, a promising bill in the state House would bring in powerful partners to help.

In the 2006-07 school year, more than 11,000 teenagers - nearly 4 percent of the state's public high school students - dropped out. More troubling is the cumulative number of students who enter ninth grade but, four years later, fail to graduate. Statewide, while 81 percent of the class that entered ninth grade in 2003 graduated on time in 2007, 9 percent dropped out. And 6.6 percent were still in school.

Time can be punishing. Once dropouts reach their 20s, they are no longer seen as youngsters in need of academic help. And their own motivation to get a high school degree can fade. That's why the state needs a dropout prevention and recovery system that can respond quickly when students quit school. It also needs more alternative programs that meet the needs of young adults who seek diplomas, but who won't sit in a classroom full of younger students.

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Camp Leads a Drumbeat for a Marching Band's Style

Samuel Freedman:

As his extended family gathered around the table for dinner last Christmas, Ben Brock received one final present. It was a scrapbook, each page adorned with photos of him as a child and handwritten notes from his relatives. Then, on the last sheet, the names of his mother, sister, uncles and aunts appeared, with a dollar figure next to each.

Those numbers reflected the money they had pledged to send Ben, 16, almost as far from his home in Seattle as it was possible to go within the continental United States. At the end of that journey lay the dream he had nurtured since watching the movie “Drum Line” in sixth grade: to become part of the Marching 100, the renowned band at Florida A&M University.

So on a gauzy gray morning seven months later Ben and his snare drum strode onto the dewy grass of the band’s practice field on the Tallahassee campus. He had been awakened at 5 a.m. and the day’s last rehearsal would not end until 10 p.m. His feet screamed. His shoulders ached. Gnats swarmed around his face, daring him to break rhythm and lose composure.

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Referendum Climate: Wisconsin Net Property Tax Levies up 5.7% in 2008; Madison's up 6.9%

WisTax:

Net property taxes in Wisconsin rose 5.7% in 2008, the largest increase since 2005, the year before the recent levy limits on municipalities and counties were imposed. A new report from the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WISTAX) found that while gross property taxes climbed 6.2%, state lawmakers increased the school levy credit $79.3 million to $672.4 million to lessen the impact on property taxpayers. The new study, "The Property Tax in National Context," notes that 2006 property taxes here were ninth highest nationally and higher than those in all surrounding states.

According to the new study, school levies rose the most, 7.4%. With the recent state budget delayed until October 2007, school aids were unchanged from 2006-07. Since school property taxes are tied to state aids through state-imposed revenue limits, the budget delay resulted in higher school property taxes, WISTAX said. Now in its 76th year, WISTAX is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public-policy research organization dedicated to citizen education.

County and municipal levy increases were limited by state lawmakers to the greater of 3.86% or the increase in property values due to new construction. There were exceptions to the limits, particularly for new debt service. The WISTAX report noted that, with a slowing real estate market, statewide net new construction growth was 2.5%. However, municipal property taxes climbed 5.0%, and county levies were up 4.5%.

Among the three types of municipalities, municipal-purpose property tax levies in cities (5.3%) grew fastest, followed by villages (4.6%) and towns (4.2%). The report noted that the state’s two largest municipalities had above-average increases: Milwaukee was up 9.0%, while Madison’s municipal levy climbed 6.9%. The largest county increases were in Eau Claire (19.2%), Polk (13.5%), Door (12.4%), and Pierce (12.3%) counties.

Related: Wisconsin State Tax revenues up 2.9%.

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Educators debate gulf dividing schools, students

Andy Gammill:

Ruby Payne and Jawanza Kunjufu had never shared the stage before Friday, but their careers have intertwined for years in a debate over how American teachers differ from their students.

Both believe teachers fail to make connections with students because of differences in cultural backgrounds. Payne, a white former principal, believes poverty is the root of that disconnect. Kunjufu, a black educator, says that theory ignores race.

The two have sparred in writing and in separate appearances but spoke together for the first time Friday at Indiana Black Expo to a room of hundreds of educators from around the state.
"They do not agree on many issues, but they have agreed on one important thing: They have agreed to come together and talk to us and help us better understand their views," Brownsburg Schools Superintendent Kathleen Corbin said in an introduction.

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International education 'a fundamental need' today

Linda Lantor Fandel:

Ellen Estrada is principal of Walter Payton College Prep High School on the near north side of Chicago, near downtown. The public magnet school, which opened in 2000, is named in honor of the legendary Chicago Bears football player, who died shortly before it opened. In 2006, Walter Payton won a prestigious Goldman Sachs Prize for Excellence in International Education. Almost all students take four years of a foreign language and have the opportunity to travel abroad. Videoconferences have been held with students in Iraq, South Africa, Morocco, China and Chile, among other places. The school's reputation for nurturing global citizens brought U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the school for a visit in February. Estrada was interviewed by Linda Lantor Fandel, deputy editorial-page editor.

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Chicago high school emphasizes fundamentals - and a world view

Linda Lantor Fandel:

Jordan Nolan didn't have to show up after school on a Friday in late May for a discussion about the invisible children of Uganda. Neither did about 30 other teenagers sprawled on couches and chairs in a classroom at Walter Payton College Prep High School in Chicago.

But after a brief presentation by four students, they engaged in a spirited, hour-long debate about just whose responsibility it is to try to end a civil war fought with kidnapped child soldiers.

The turnout wasn't surprising, not even at the end of a week near the end of the school year.

Not at a public high school that's an American showcase for how to prepare young people for a globally competitive economy in the 21century.

While the national and international conversation grows louder about how to define a world-class education, Payton is a real-life laboratory.

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Brookfield man who ran ads now says he opposed high school upgrades

Lisa Sink:

A neurosurgeon who spent $4,230 of his own money to run newspaper ads challenging a $62.2 million referendum to upgrade two Brookfield high schools said Monday that he wishes he would have spent another $10,000 to get it defeated.

Brookfield resident James Hollowell had said in March that his ads were not trying to advocate for or against the building plan and were merely to urge residents to investigate the accuracy of district information.

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First Lady defends criticized 'No Child' tests

Greg Toppo:

No Child Left Behind can't catch a break lately on the campaign trail. Barack Obama last week slammed its "broken promises" and John McCain called it "a good beginning" that "has to be fixed."
Ask first lady Laura Bush and she'll tell you that, come what may, the 2002 education law, championed by President Bush, will be a lasting part of her husband's legacy.

Its requirement for annual testing in reading and math for virtually all children in grades three through eight has led critics to charge that it focuses too much on testing, but Mrs. Bush says she doesn't buy it.

"We would never go to a doctor and say, 'I'm sick, you can't try to diagnose me … you can't use any kind of test," she says.

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High school basketball talent, college staffs swarm Vegas

Eric Sondheimer:

Las Vegas is a city known for making and breaking dreams, and that's where hundreds of high school basketball players have converged this week hoping to lock up college scholarships.

For five days beginning today, coaches will be out en masse observing and scouting the biggest collection of teenage talent in the nation, with nearly 900 travel teams playing in four tournaments in dozens of high school gyms spread across the city.


In attendance will be the nation's most recognizable college coaches and just about everyone else whose business is basketball, with shoe company and apparel executives, agents and professional scouts joining the Elvis impersonators.

The most important requirement for a coach: "If you don't have GPS, you're in trouble," USC assistant Bob Cantu said.

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State audits again find problems in spending by Seattle Public Schools

Jessica Blanchard:

or the seventh year in a row, state audits of Seattle Public Schools highlighted some questionable expenses and persistent payroll problems.

The audits, released Monday, noted about $23,890 worth of questionable expenses from the 2006-07 school year. In one case, a former school district secretary forged her supervisor's signature to get paid for nearly 300 hours of overtime that she had not worked, costing the district more than $8,700. The district fired her.

In another case, auditors found that more than $15,100 in Associated Student Body money was used improperly to pay for plane tickets to bring South African exchange students and teachers to Seattle as part of a high school foreign-exchange program.

The district also was faulted for paying some Seattle high school students participating in the exchange program approximately $25,000 up front for travel expenses to South Africa and Ireland. The district should have reimbursed them later, auditors said, and shouldn't have covered some improper purchases made during the trips -- including alcoholic drinks and host gifts.

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July 22, 2008

Meeting special needs through art

Pamela McLoughlin

Early in her career teaching special education, Beverly Levett Gerber once had an unusual mix of students; some had behavior problems, others developmental disabilities and some were gifted.
It was quite the challenge, but she knew how to achieve harmony.

“There were few things we could do together, but we could do the art work together at their rate and level,” Gerber said. “When you reach them at their level, they succeed.”

Gerber, a professor emeritus at Southern Connecticut State University who still teaches a course each semester, is a nationally recognized star in the fields of both art education and special education, most noted for combining the two seemingly divergent fields. Gerber taught at her alma mater, Southern, for 33 years before retiring from full-time work in 2003.

“Because of the uniqueness of the two fields coming together, I call myself a matchmaker,” Gerber, of Milford said with a twinkle in her eye.

Gerber’s commitment to the notion that art is a vehicle for special needs students to learn other subjects, to express themselves emotionally and show their level, has led to such groundbreaking progress in the field that colleagues from the National Art Education Association established The Beverly Levett Gerber Lifetime Achievement award to go each year to an outstanding art educator who works with special needs children.

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Jackson Public Schools trim superintendent list to 5

Nicole Spinuzzi:

Parents have said they want to be more involved with the selection process. About 25 JPS parents and Jackson residents rallied on South State Street in front of the district's administration buildings Friday, urging the board to slow down the selection process and allow for more community involvement.

In an attempt to get the public more involved, the board asked community members to submit suggested questions for the board to ask applicants. Stamps said at least 20 community members responded.

Jackson supports about 31,000 students and the article notes that "20 community members responded". I recall that the Madison Superintendent Search consultants mentioned that the approximately 400 community responses (in a district with 24,268 students) was quite good. Certainly, apathy reigns.

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Referendum Climate: Wisconsin State Tax Collection Update

Department of Revenue:

This report includes general purpose revenue (GPR) taxes collected by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, and does not include taxes collected by the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (OCI), administrative fees, and other miscellaneous revenues. Total General Fund tax collections are reported in the Department of Administration’s Report of Monthly General Fund Financial Information, which includes GPR and program revenue taxes collected by all state agencies.
Overall tax collections are up 2.9%, however, state spending is growing at a faster rate, which has caused state and local spending changes. I wonder how the 2.9% tax collection increase compares to the average annual wage changes?

More: "Where Does All That Money Go?" by John Matsusaka:

Some of it went to cover increases in the cost of living, and state spending naturally grows with the size of the population. But even adjusting for inflation and population growth, state spending is up almost 20% compared with four years ago, a big enough bump that ordinary Californians should be able to notice it. The state's financial statements describe where the money went -- the big gainers were education ($13 billion), transportation ($10 billion) and health ($10 billion) -- but not why these billions don't create even a blip on our day-to-day radar.

One possibility is that we simply do not notice all of the valuable services we receive. A national 2007 survey by William G. Howell at the University of Chicago and Martin R. West at Brown University found that respondents underestimated spending in their school district by 60%; on average, they believed spending was $4,231 per student when in fact it was $10,377. They also found that Americans underestimated teacher salaries by 30%. How many Californians know that public school teachers in the state earn an average of $59,000 a year, essentially tied with Connecticut for the highest average pay in the country? Likewise, perhaps we don't notice the repaired roads or new buses and trains that take us to work.

On the other hand, maybe these billions of dollars just do not translate into services that are valuable to us.

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Guess What's Hot This Summer? School

Amy Hetzner:

Believe it or not, walking the halls of local high schools this summer are students not forced to make up courses they flunked in the spring, but ones who maybe — just maybe — want to be there.

And not just because they want to learn how to drive. They’re taking classes so they can have more time for elective offerings and Advanced Placement classes during the regular school year, or maybe pick up an internship, or even graduate early.

“You’re able to take everything you want if you take a lot of classes during the summer,” said Aaron Redlich, an incoming senior at Nicolet High School in Glendale who is enrolled in physical education and creative writing classes this summer.

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Meet the Neets

Julie Henry & Miles Goslett:

In 1997, when Gordon Brown announced the "most radical welfare reforms since the Second World War", he declared that the unemployed young would be first in the firing line. "How," he asked, "did a society like ours get itself into a position where we are wasting young people's talents like this?"

The Chancellor had what he thought was a solution. Under his Welfare-to-Work programme, funded by a £5 billion windfall tax on the privatised utilities, the welfare state would be transformed, making it crystal clear that "staying at home is not an option".

But, 10 years on, the work ethic that Mr Brown was so confident he could inculcate in the nation's jobless youth remains elusive. In fact, things have got worse: the phenomenon of Neets (young people "not in education, employment or training") is on the rise.

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Global Academy Magnet School from the Verona, Middleton Cross Plains, Belleville, McFarland, Mount Horeb and Oregon School Districts

Seth Jovaag via a kind reader's email:

Local school officials took another early step Monday toward creating a Verona-based magnet school that could offer area high school students specialized classes they might not get otherwise.

With Madison Area Technical College searching for a new place to build a campus in southwestern Dane County, six area school districts are lining up behind the idea of a "Global Academy," where high schoolers could learn job skills and earn post-secondary credits.

The Verona Area school board Monday approved the spending of $6,750 to hire a consultant to put together a detailed plan for how the six districts could work with MATC - and possibly the University of Wisconsin - to create such a campus.

That money will pool with similar amounts from five districts - Oregon, Belleville, Mount Horeb, McFarland and Middleton-Cross Plains - eager to see MATC land nearby, too.

The consultant, expected to start Aug. 15, will be asked to hone the concept of the school, including how it could be organized and how the consortium would work together.

Though the academy is currently little more than a concept, board member Dennis Beres said that if it comes to fruition, it could be a huge addition for the district.

Deborah Ziff:
Administrators from six Dane County school districts are planning to create a program called The Global Academy, a hybrid of high school and college courses offering specialized skills for high school juniors and seniors.

The consortium of districts includes Verona, MiddletonCross Plains, Belleville, McFarland, Mount Horeb and Oregon.

The Global Academy would offer courses in four career clusters: architecture and construction; health science; information technology; and science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

"We really see a need for vocational and technical programs and career planning," said Dean Gorrell, superintendent of Verona Schools. "It's tough to keep those going."

Smart. Related: Credit for non-MMSD Courses.

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Business Schools Try Palm Scans To Finger Cheats

John Hechinger:

In a sign of increasing concern about cheating, the nation's top business schools will soon require a high-tech identity check for standardized admissions tests.

Aspiring corporate executives taking the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, will have to undergo a "palm vein" scan, which takes an infrared picture of the blood coursing through their hands. The image -- which resembles a highway interchange in a major city -- is unique to every individual. The scans are used widely in Japan among users of automated teller machines but only recently have appeared in the U.S.

Palm-vein scanning on GMAT test takers will begin next month in Korea and India, with U.S. centers starting as early as this fall and a world-wide rollout by May.

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As education in Iowa slips, where's the public outcry?

Des Moines Register Editorial:

What would it take for Iowa - and the nation - to fully prepare students for the globally competitive world of today and tomorrow?

What does that mean for the curriculum, training of teachers and expectations for students? What is the best way to transform classrooms to deliver this world-class education, not just to elite students but to everyone? Are national standards the answer, or should that be left to states?

Those are some of the questions The Des Moines Register's editorial board has asked in recent months. We've talked with educators and policymakers, we've visited schools and we'll visit others here and abroad.
everal things are clear from conversations to date:

One is a growing, though hardly universal, concern that the United States must better educate students to keep its competitive edge in a fast-changing global economy. The rise of Asia and the flattening of the world with technology - allowing jobs to move virtually anywhere in the world - create great opportunities but also pose significant threats. That's especially worrisome when American youngsters perform so poorly in math and science on international tests compared to their peers in many other places.

Interest grows in higher standards.

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Doubts Linger on Pre-K-8 Strategy

Bill Turque:

Like surgical scars, once promising or trendy ideas for reform have left their marks all over the D.C. school system. Many came as officials pursued the best way to configure schools for students coping with their turbulent adolescent years.

At one time or another, the city has tried schools starting with kindergarten through ninth grade and K-7; junior highs with grades seven through nine; middle schools with grades six through eight; and, most recently, schools with pre-K through eighth grade.

Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has decided to expand the District's investment in that last format, making it a major element in the program of school closures and consolidations she launched last month.

At a cost of $58 million, five elementary and middle schools -- Oyster-Adams, Powell, LaSalle, Francis and Brown -- will expand to pre-K-8, receiving students from the shuttered schools when classes begin in August. An additional 13 will become pre-K-7 this fall and add eighth grade in 2009.

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School District Citizen’s Audit Committee Gets Results

Dr. Armand Fusco:

On June 30 and July 1st an historic educational event took place in Enfield, CT (school population of 6500) where a joint meeting of the Board of Education and Town Council convened to hear four reports from a citizen's audit committee composed of 17 members that was authorized by the Board of Education in January 2008.

It was the determined effort of one board member, Sue Lavelli-Hozempa, who was responsible for getting the audit committee authorized.She learned about the audit committee approach from one of my presentations that she attended on school finance and budgeting that I conduct throughout Connecticut.

It's historic for four reasons.First, it is probably the first time an audit committee proved that ordinary citizens who were selected without any required qualifications could, with training, education and direction, be a tremendous community and board asset in providing effective and meaningful fiscal oversight of school spending.

But it went beyond what is typically done with typical financial audits; instead, it was also designed to begin a Performance Review Audit (PRA) process.The PRA is "an examination of a program, function, operation or management systems and procedures to assess whether the district is achieving economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the employment of available resources."This is really what taxpayers want to know and certainly it should be what every school board member would want to know and what every administrator should be doing:determining how money is actually spent and whether waste and mismanagement exists in school operations, practices, procedures and policie--something a fiscal audit does not do.

Clusty Search: Armand A. Fusco.

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The Mayor & Madison Schools, Redux

Jason Joyce's useful weekly summary of Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's schedule often offers a few useful nuggets. This week we find that Madison School Board member Ed Hughes is lunching with Mayor Dave today.

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Use technology to connect students around the world

Des Moines Register Editorial:

Elementary students in Sioux City and Wales have been getting together occasionally for years to talk about holiday traditions, sports and school lunches, said Jim Christensen, distance-learning coordinator at the Northwest Area Education Agency in Sioux City. They've made presentations and held interactive question-and-answer sessions.

"It's easy to say, 'What does that have to do with the curriculum?' But it has everything to do with learning to communicate and a perspective on the world that's unbelievable," he said.

Colin Evans, head teacher of the school in Wales, echoed those thoughts in an e-mail: "Exchanging e-mails or written letters and photographs would be a poor substitute for these experiences. This has brought a whole new dimension to the curriculum... Use of technology is uniting two schools 6,000 miles apart into one global classroom."

Related: Credit for Non Madison School District Courses.

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July 21, 2008

Senate school budget creates room for more competition

Detroit News Editorial:

With the district facing a $400 million deficit -- roughly one-third of its total budget -- a careful accounting of how it is using its money would seem to be in order.

"That's a fairly significant gift for the district of Detroit for which we get nothing in return," Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, Senate Education Committee chairman, said after he voted no on the plan. "We get no deficit reduction plan, no power to audit the district."

But in truth, the introduction of more high-quality charters is the best education reform Detroit parents could ask for from the Legislature. It will force Detroit school district to either fix itself or wither away.

Parents who have an alternative will not keep their children in failing schools. This is, in effect, a last chance for Detroit to get it right.

The article implies that Detroit spends about $1.2 Billion to educate around 100,000 students annually (roughly 12K per student). Madison's 2008-2009 current budget is $367M spends $15,156 per student.

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The High School Years: "Raw and Still Unfair"

Karen Durbin:

HIGH school can be hard to shake. Some people never make it out of the cafeteria; they’re still trying to find the cool kids’ table. With “American Teen,” opening nationwide on Friday, Nanette Burstein can claim a certain expertise on the subject. This movie earned her the documentary directing award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and set off a bidding war. It’s also something of an exorcism. Ms. Burstein was co-director, with Brett Morgen, of two highly regarded documentaries: the Oscar-nominated “On the Ropes,” about three young boxers hoping to fight their way out of poverty, and “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” a portrait of the flamboyant Hollywood producer Robert Evans. But the impetus for "American Teen" was more personal: her own intense high school experience two decades ago in Buffalo.

To make the 90-minute film Ms. Burstein moved to Warsaw, Ind., and, deploying multiple cameras, gathered 1,000 hours of footage as she and her crew followed four 17-year-olds through their senior year at the town’s large, modern high school. The students could almost be the template for a John Hughes teen pic: the pampered queen bee Megan, whose imperious will to power masks a terrible secret; the basketball player Colin, who must win a sports scholarship or forgo college for the Army; the gifted bohemian Hannah, ready to break away but terrified that she may have inherited her mother’s bipolar disorder; and the lonely band nerd Jake, funny and appealing but afflicted with vivid acne flare-ups that complicate his wry, determined search for a girlfriend.

To watch these real teenagers is to see egos and identities in raw, volatile formation; on the verge of entering a larger world, they are reaching for a sense of self.

Wall-e (for it's brief look at assembly line education and cultural homogonization) and the controversial Idiocracy (for its look at ongoing curriculum reduction initiatives) are also worth watching.

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Autism is "A Fraud, a Racket"

From Media Matters:

On July 16, the No. 3 syndicated radio talk show host in the country, Michael Savage, made the following statement on autism:

"Now, you want me to tell you my opinion on autism? ... A fraud, a racket."

Savage went on to say:

Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is.

What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, "Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot."

Autism -- everybody has an illness. If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, "Don't behave like a fool." The worst thing he said -- "Don't behave like a fool. Don't be anybody's dummy. Don't sound like an idiot. Don't act like a girl. Don't cry." That's what I was raised with. That's what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You're turning your son into a girl, and you're turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That's why we have the politicians we have.

During the same broadcast, Savage also attacked those in "the minority community" who suffer from asthma. He stated: "[W]hy was there an asthma epidemic amongst minority children? Because I'll tell you why: The children got extra welfare if they were disabled, and they got extra help in school. It was a money racket. Everyone went in and was told [fake cough], 'When the nurse looks at you, you go [fake cough], "I don't know, the dust got me." ' See, everyone had asthma from the minority community."

Michael Savage's mean-spirited comments are disgusting and are an affront to basic decency.

Find your local Savage Station, log into our calling tool and tell your Savage station manager what you think of Savage's tirade.

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Skepticism Greets Big Test Gains

Maria Glod:

State reading and math tests taken by Maryland students were shortened and tweaked this year, leading some critics to question whether the shifts contributed to surprisingly strong gains in achievement.

State officials said the changes to the Maryland School Assessments, used to measure academic progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law, had no significant impact on performance. They said an outside panel of education experts determined that the tests were as difficult as last year's exams or those administered in previous years.

Scores released Tuesday attracted attention because of dramatic gains -- some of the largest since the federal law was enacted in 2002. Statewide, the share of students who received scores of proficient or better jumped six percentage points in reading to 82 percent, and four percentage points in math to 76 percent.

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We Know What Works. Let's Do It

by Leonard Pitts Miami Herald lpitts@miamiherald.com

This will be the last What Works column.

I reserve the right to report occasionally on any program I run across that shows results in saving the lives and futures of African American kids. But this is the last in the series I started 19 months ago to spotlight such programs.

Let me begin by thanking you for your overwhelming response to my request for nominations, and to thank everyone from every program who allowed me to peek behind the scenes. From the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City to SEI (Self-Enhancement Inc.) in Portland, Ore., I have been privileged and uplifted to see dedicated people doing amazing work.

I am often asked whether I've found common denominators in all these successful programs, anything we can use in helping kids at risk. The short answer is, yes. You want to know what works? Longer school days and longer school years work. Giving principals the power to hire good teachers and fire bad ones works. High expectations work. Giving a teacher freedom to hug a child who needs hugging works. Parental involvement works. Counseling for troubled students and families works. Consistency of effort works. Incentives work. Field trips that expose kids to possibilities you can't see from their broken neighborhoods, work.

Indeed, the most important thing I've learned is that none of this is rocket science. We already know what works. What we lack is the will to do it. Instead, we have a hit-and-miss patchwork of programs achieving stellar results out on the fringes of the larger, failing, system. Why are they the exception and not the rule? If we know what works, why don't we simply do it? Nineteen months ago when I started, I asked Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone why anyone should pay to help him help poor kids in crumbling neighborhoods. He told me, "Someone's yelling at me because I'm spending $3,500 a year on 'Alfred.' Alfred is 8. OK, Alfred turns 18. No one thinks anything about locking him up for 10 years at $60,000 a year." Amen. Forget the notion of a moral obligation to uplift failing children. Consider the math instead. If that investment of $3,500 per annum creates a functioning adult who pays taxes and otherwise contributes to the system, why would we pass that up in favor of creating, 10 years later, an adult who drains the system to the tune of $60,000 a year for his incarceration alone, to say nothing of the other costs he foists upon society? How does that make sense? Nineteen months later, I have yet to find a good answer.

Instead, I find passivity. "Save the Children," Marvin Gaye exhorted 27 years ago. But we are losing the children in obscene numbers. Losing them to jails, losing them to graves, losing them to illiteracy, teen parenthood, and other dead-ends and cul-de-sacs of life. But I have yet to hear America – or even African America – scream about it. Does no one else see a crisis here? "I don't think that in America, especially in black America, we can arrest this problem unless we understand the urgency of it," says Tony Hopson Sr., founder of SEI. "When I say urgency, I'm talking 9/11 urgency, I'm talking Hurricane Katrina urgency, things that stop a nation. I don't think in black America this is urgent enough. Kids are dying every single day. I don't see where the NAACP, the Urban League, the Black Caucus, have decided that the fact that black boys are being locked up at alarming rates means we need to stop the nation and have a discussion about how we're going to eradicate that as a problem. It has not become urgent enough. If black America don't see it as urgent enough, how dare us think white America is going to think it's urgent enough?"

In other words, stand up. Get angry. Stop accepting what is clearly unacceptable. I'll bet you that works, too.

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Saving Young Men With Career Academies

Jay Matthews:

By usual measures of student progress, America's high school career academies have been a failure. One of the longest and most scientific education studies ever conducted concluded they did not improve test scores or graduation rates or college success for urban youth. People like me, obsessed with raising student achievement, saw those numbers and said: Well, too bad. Let's try something else.

And yet, because the career academy research by the New York-based MDRC (formerly known as the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp.) was so detailed and professional, we have just learned that the academies accomplished something perhaps even better than higher passing rates on reading exams. They produced young men who got better-paying jobs, were more likely to live independently with children and a spouse or partner and were more likely to be married and have custody of their children.

This is a remarkable finding. It has the power not only to revitalize vocational education but to shift the emphasis of school assessment toward long-range effects on students' lives, not just on how well they did in school and college.

MDRC:
Established more than 30 years ago, Career Academies have become a widely used high school reform initiative that aims to keep students engaged in school and prepare them for successful transitions to postsecondary education and employment. Typically serving between 150 and 200 students from grades 9 or 10 through grade 12, Career Academies are organized as small learning communities, combine academic and technical curricula around a career theme, and establish partnerships with local employers to provide work-based learning opportunities. There are estimated to be more than 2,500 Career Academies operating around the country.

Since 1993, MDRC has been conducting a uniquely rigorous evaluation of the Career Academy approach that uses a random assignment research design in a diverse group of nine high schools across the United States. Located in medium- and large-sized school districts, the schools confront many of the educational challenges found in low-income urban settings. The participating Career Academies were able to implement and sustain the core features of the approach, and they served a cross-section of the student populations in their host schools. This report describes how Career Academies influenced students’ labor market prospects and postsecondary educational attainment in the eight years following their expected graduation. The results are based on the experiences of more than 1,400 young people, approximately 85 percent of whom are Hispanic or African-American.

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The Next Kind of Integration: Class, Race and Desegregating American Schools

Emily Bazelon:

In June of last year, a conservative majority of the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, declared the racial-integration efforts of two school districts unconstitutional. Seattle and Louisville, Ky., could no longer assign students to schools based on their race, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his lead opinion in Meredith v. Jefferson County School Board (and its companion case, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1). Justice Stephen Breyer sounded a sad and grim note of dissent. Pointing out that the court was rejecting student-assignment plans that the districts had designed to stave off de facto resegregation, Breyer wrote that “to invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown.” By invoking Brown v. Board of Education, the court’s landmark 1954 civil rights ruling, Breyer accused the majority of abandoning a touchstone in the country’s efforts to overcome racial division. “This is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret,” he concluded.

Breyer’s warning, along with even more dire predictions from civil rights groups, helped place the court’s ruling at the center of the liberal indictment of the Roberts court. In Louisville, too, the court’s verdict met with resentment. Last fall, I asked Pat Todd, the assignment director for the school district of Jefferson County, which encompasses Louisville and its suburbs, whether any good could come of the ruling. She shook her head so hard that strands of blond hair loosened from her bun. “No,” she said with uncharacteristic exasperation, “we’re already doing what we should be.”

Todd was referring to Louisville’s success in distributing black and white students, which it does more evenly than any district in the country with a comparable black student population; almost every school is between 15 and 50 percent African-American. The district’s combination of school choice, busing and magnet programs has brought general, if not uniform, acceptance — rather than white flight and disaffection, the legacy of desegregation in cities like Boston and Kansas City, Mo. The student population, which now numbers nearly 100,000, has held steady at about 35 percent black and 55 percent white, along with a small and growing number of Hispanics and Asians.

Former Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater was a principal and assistant Superintendent in Kansas City.

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July 20, 2008

DC Union Chief Sets Meetings, Says Talks at 'Very Critical Stage'

Bill Turque:

In an e-mail sent to union members Thursday night, Parker said contract talks will be shut down next week "to share detailed information with our members and provide clarity about key issues as they relate to seniority, tenure and compensation."

Parker said the meetings, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday at McKinley Technological High School in Northeast Washington, will also be attended by Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. He said Rhee "will be available for Q and A at a designated time during each session."

The negotiations, which began in December, have come to focus on Rhee's efforts to win acceptance of an optional "pay-for-performance plan," a system of compensation historically opposed by teachers unions.

Citing union sources, none of whom was Parker, The Washington Post reported July 3 that Rhee was proposing a two-tiered salary system in which teachers could earn substantially more if they relinquished some seniority rights and assumed some accountability for test scores. Teachers could choose to retain seniority and receive smaller raises.

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Presidential Election Curricula for the Gifted

Carol Fertig:

As the excitement builds this fall with the upcoming election, teachers and parents will want to have good resources at hand to help gifted students understand the election process. Here are just a few resourses. If you have other good resources to share, please list them in the comments area of this blog entry.

Specific Curricula

Rutherford Public Schools in New Jersey has developed curricula for their gifted program, grades 7–8. The information is very general and includes objectives, course outline, curriculum content standards, assessments, resources, and activities.

One of the resources used in the Rutherford Public Schools curriculum is the Interact simulation The Presidential Election Process. Interact recommends this curriculum for grades 5–8. If you scroll down on this page, you will see that Interact materials were recommended in my June 28, 2008 blog entry.

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Why are Public Schools So Bad at Hiring Good Instructors?

Ray Fisman:

PS 49 in Queens used to be an average school in New York City's decidedly below-average school system. That was before Anthony Lombardi moved into the principal's office. When Lombardi took charge in 1997, 37 percent of fourth graders read at grade level, compared with nearly 90 percent today; there have also been double-digit improvements in math scores. By 2002, PS 49 made the state's list of most improved schools. If you ask Lombardi how it happened, he'll launch into a well-practiced monologue on the many changes that he brought to PS 49 (an arts program, a new curriculum from Columbia's Teachers College). But he keeps coming back to one highly controversial element of the school's turnaround: getting rid of incompetent teachers.

Firing bad teachers may seem like a rather obvious solution, but it requires some gumption to take on a teachers union. And cleaning house isn't necessarily the only answer. There are three basic ways to improve a school's faculty: take greater care in selecting good teachers upfront, throw out the bad ones who are already teaching, and provide training to make current teachers better. In theory, the first two should have more or less the same effect, and it might seem preferable to focus on never hiring unpromising instructors—once entrenched, it's nearly impossible in most places to remove teachers from their union-protected jobs. But that's assuming we're good at predicting who will teach well in the first place.

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Michigan School Budget Agreement
Plan gives districts funds to create small-size high schools

Chris Christoff:

The $15 million for smaller high schools is less than half of the $32 million Gov. Jennifer Granholm had requested. The fund would give out $3 million in direct start-up grants to some districts with high dropout rates, rather than pay off bonds to build the revamped high schools.

Senate Republicans, who hold a majority, held fast against selling more state bonds for the school plan, which Granholm had proposed.

The basic grant to all schools would range from $56 to $112 per pupil, depending on how much each district now receives; lower spending districts would receive larger increases.

The increases are roughly half of what Granholm originally proposed because state revenues have come in less than expected since January.

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The $20,000 Question: Why are these kids typing on unplugged computers?

Stephanie Banchero and Patricia Callahan:

The state is squandering taxpayer money on dubious after-school grants, including many that rewarded one lawmaker's political supporters, a Tribune investigation found.

In a church on Chicago's West Side, two homeless children fiddled aimlessly on unplugged computers, awaiting their "tutor."

Another church sat darkened and padlocked during after-school hours even though it was presented as a tutoring center.

A woman used her grant for billboard ads that would encourage teens to attend community college, but she pocketed nearly half the money. The billboards have yet to appear.

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Policing kids with autism is a new challenge on the beat

Shawn Doherty:

A barefoot girl in her nightgown is picked up wandering along a dark Dane County highway. Sheriff deputies have no idea how the little girl got there, who she is, what happened to her, or where to take her.

A young man walks out of a camp for adults with cognitive disabilities and into the woods. It takes thousands of searchers a week to find Keith Kennedy -- naked, weak, covered with scratches and ticks, but alive.

A 7-year-old with blue eyes slips out of the basement of his house in Saratoga. On the fifth day of a massive search, rescue dogs find Benjamin Heil in a nearby pond, drowned.

These recent Wisconsin cases all involved individuals with autism, a devastating brain disorder that impairs judgment and communication. Over the past decade, the number of children diagnosed with this disorder has multiplied tenfold, and the national Centers for Disease Control now considers autism to be a public health crisis. Autism frequently wreaks havoc not just on a child's entire family, but on law and safety enforcement in the streets. The problem is expected to get worse as this population grows up.

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July 19, 2008

Transformation, Not Just Reform of Public Education

Sir Ken Robinson speaking to the Apple Education Leadership Summit earlier this year. video

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The End of White Flight

Conor Dougherty:

Decades of white flight transformed America's cities. That era is drawing to a close.

In Washington, a historically black church is trying to attract white members to survive. Atlanta's next mayoral race is expected to feature the first competitive white candidate since the 1980s. San Francisco has lost so many African-Americans that Mayor Gavin Newsom created an "African-American Out-Migration Task Force and Advisory Committee" to help retain black residents.

"The city is experiencing growth, yet we're losing African-American families disproportionately," Mr. Newsom says. When that happens, "we lose part of our soul."

For much of the 20th century, the proportion of whites shrank in most U.S. cities. In recent years the decline has slowed considerably -- and in some significant cases has reversed. Between 2000 and 2006, eight of the 50 largest cities, including Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, saw the proportion of whites increase, according to Census figures. The previous decade, only three cities saw increases.

The changing racial mix is stirring up quarrels over class and culture. Beloved institutions in traditionally black communities -- minority-owned restaurants, book stores -- are losing the customers who supported them for decades. As neighborhoods grow more multicultural, conflicts over home prices, taxes and education are opening a new chapter in American race relations.

Related: a look at local K-12 enrollment changes.

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Washington board weighs stiffer graduation standards

Dan Hansen:

At the urging of major employers and state officials, the Washington state Board of Education is about to adopt tough new high school graduation requirements.

But students might not notice a difference.

That’s because the so-called Core 24 requirements would not take effect until the Legislature comes up with money to pay for them. Educators say the state already falls about $1 billion short of meeting its mandate to finance basic education.

One exception: The board next week is expected to adopt a required third math credit starting with the class of 2013. And that class will have to be at the level of Algebra II or above.

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Where's Education, Part III

Megan Garber:

Yesterday, for the first time during the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain issued a set of specific policy proposals for improving the country’s failing education system. Speaking at the NAACP’s annual meeting in Cincinnati, the presumptive GOP nominee promoted vouchers for parochial, private, and charter schools; alternative certification programs that would lower the barriers to teaching; school-level funding of merit pay for teachers; the continuation of federal funding for tutoring services; and federal funding for virtual schools and online learning.

You’d think all this would be worth some attention. Not only has McCain been basically mum about his education platform since he declared his candidacy, but his 2008 plans mark a significant, move-to-the-middle departure from the relatively bold positions he advocated in 2000. But no. Many of the major print outlets’ write-ups of McCain’s speech were relegated to those outlets’ blogs. And the ones that gave column inches to the speech often focused either on the kind words McCain had for Obama at the outset of his speech (breaking: McCain said something nice about the competition!) or about the tepid reception that met McCain’s appearance at Cincinnati’s Duke Energy Center:

Meanwhile, ed in 08 is spending $60 (from the Gates Foundation, among others) running TV, radio and print ads....

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July 18, 2008

Grade 6 & 9 Math Problems from Japan

700K PDF. Grade 6


Grade 9


Via the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Wiki and ed in 08 (best item from their $60M campaign thus far).

Math Forum.

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Fairfax County Schools Consider Spending Freeze or Reductions

Michael Alison Chandler:

County departments have been asked to find potential spending cuts of 15 percent. Whether the school system, which with 165,700 students is the region's largest, agrees to take the same approach is an open question.

Gerald E. Connolly (D) said the school system must share equally in the fiscal burdens faced by other sectors of government. School system spending reductions in past years, he said, have been "pretty anemic."

Links:

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Trendy teaching is back: Four out of five primary schools are introducing 'creative learning', with lessons about 'groovy Greeks'. Should we worry?

Sian Griffiths:

Katie Harris, 11, is telling me that she recently spent a lesson making paper aeroplanes and measuring how far they flew. What did she learn? “It was really enjoyable. It wasn’t just about one subject like maths, there was science in there as well,” she replied.

Katie is a pupil at Bursted Wood primary in Bexley, southeast London, one of eight schools in the borough at the forefront of a stampede back to “creative learning” and progressive teaching methods that were popular more than a decade ago.

Despite the bad press such methods got back then, when they were blamed for turning out thousands of children who couldn’t read or write properly, a survey of 115 primary schools last week revealed that four out of five are returning to teaching based around “topics” such as chocolate.

At Bursted Wood, traditional secondary-school style classes in subjects such as history, geography and maths have been ditched for topics planned out on “creative learning wheels”.

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Education panel begins search for long-term reforms

Dave Williams:

Schools must spend more on early childhood education, steer students as young as 16 into college and pay teachers six-figure salaries if Americans are to succeed in today's international labor force, a national expert told Georgia education leaders Thursday.

Mark Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, outlined a report he wrote two years ago during the kickoff meeting of a "working group" appointed by Gov. Sonny Perdue to develop a long-term education reform strategy to make Georgia more competitive in the global economy.

In "Tough Choices or Tough Times," Tucker wrote that the school systems of developing countries including China and India have begun producing young adults who are just as capable of filling highly skilled jobs as their U.S. counterparts but who are willing to do the work for significantly lower wages. At the same time, he said, more and more jobs are becoming automated. Tucker said the result is two enormous downward pressures on American wages.

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Education Plays a Crucial Role in Economic Curriculum

Tammy Worth:

Bob Marcusse calls the link between education and economic development a virtuous circle -- good educational programs attract new business, which leads to more financing for schools, which attract more people to an area to work at those companies.

"We and (educators) clearly understand the symbiotic relationship between education and economic development," said Marcusse, CEO of the Kansas City Area Development Council.

Educational resources act as an economic driver in numerous ways. Schools are obviously responsible for producing the work force in any given area, but they also help recruit businesses and residents, foster research that can generate money and spawn new business, and directly funnel money back into the economy through building projects and tourism dollars.

Tax base expansion (as opposed to tax rate increases) is a good idea.

Related: Money Magazine Puts City on Notice:

Back in 1996, Money credited Madison schools for high test scores and parent satisfaction. But this week, Money cited Madison for below average test scores in math. Reading scores also fell behind cities on the list.

Madison 's property taxes weren 't mentioned as a problem back in 1996. But this week, Money listed them as $600 higher than the average city on its list.

Best Places to Live, 2008.

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Are Children Creatures of the State?

David Kirkpatrick:

Most parents undoubtedly believe that their children are their responsibility. But a contrary view has a long history.

The point was made by Philadelphian Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Ten years later, in proposing a plan for education in Pennsylvania he wrote, "Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property."

His plan died but not the sentiment. It was in Pennsylvania nearly a half century later, in 1834, that the first plan for a common school system was adopted. Its prime sponsor and defender, Thaddeus Stevens, said that the sons of both the rich and the poor are all "deemed children of the same parent–the Commonwealth."

That Stevens' view was not shared by the general public was demonstrated when most of the Representatives who voted for that measure were defeated at the next election. Stevens himself was reelected and in one of the most influential speeches in American legislative history, he persuaded a majority in the new session to not repeal the new law, as they had been elected to do.

Fortunately the view that children belong to the state is not shared by the U.S. Supreme Court. In its unanimous Pierce decision in 1925, which still stands, the Court upheld parental rights to control their children's education, declaring that "The child is not the mere creature of the state," and "those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations."
I remember speaking with a former Madison School District administrator a few years ago. This person used the term "we have the children".

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July 17, 2008

San Diego Dropout Rate: 22.9%

Bruce Lieberman:

The county fared slightly better than the state, which posted a four-year dropout estimate of 24.2 percent – nearly one in four students.

The new statistics, based on the 2006-07 school year, painted a grim picture of a crisis that educators Wednesday said exacts an enormous cost on society.

“It represents a tremendous loss of potential,” said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell.

The statistics were particularly alarming among Hispanic and black students statewide. An estimated 30.3 percent of Hispanic students drop out of school between ninth and 12th grade, while more 41.6 percent of black students will drop out over that period.

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A School Where One Size Doesn't Fit All

Jay Matthews:

"The model is inspired by the success of home-schoolers," he said. Students will set their class schedules, enabling them to learn at their pace and in their styles. Teachers will act as advisers, not taskmasters.

As for homework, "the one-size-fits-all [model] mandated in today's schools is largely counterproductive," Shusterman says in a slide presentation he uses to sell his idea. School for Tomorrow will have a home reading requirement and "encourage and support individualized, student-initiated homework."

Much of Shusterman's plan is inspired by John Dewey, a 20th-century educational philosopher whose devotees have called for teachers to be "guides on the side, not sages on the stage." Dewey led a movement called progressive education in which, he said, children learn best when pursuing individual projects that allow them to explore their world.

Many teachers, in both private and public schools, use project-based learning to a degree. But at School for Tomorrow, Shusterman said, every course and project will be linked to this question: What does a high school graduate need to know and need to be able to do to thrive in college, the workplace and life in the 21st century?

www.schoolfortomorrow.net

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Patton Oswalt's Brilliant, Politically Incorrect, Graduation Speech

Thomas:

The comedian then got the ball rolling, beginning with a story of a scholarship banquet when he was about to graduate and his being given some advice by a banker at his table. Oswalt’s frank acknowledgment of his own self-absorption and his description of the "myth of myself" is such a dead on descriptor of how our youth conduct themselves had to have the adults nodding in agreement.

He recites the man’s advice:

"And then this banker – clean-shaven, grey suit and vest – you’d never look twice at him on the street – he told me about The Five Environments.

"He leans forward, near the end of the dinner, and he says to me, There are Five Environments you can live in on this planet. There’s The City. The Desert. The Mountains. The Plains. And The Beach.

"You can live in combinations of them. Maybe a city in the desert, or in the mountains by the ocean. Or you could choose just one. Out in the plains somewhere, perhaps.

"But you need to get out there and travel, and figure out where you thrive.

Patton Oswalt

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States eye cycle of retiring, rehiring

Dennis Cauchon:

States are cracking down on a controversial practice that lets government workers collect pension benefits while continuing to work for a salary.

The practice — called "double dipping" — lets tens of thousands of state and local workers retire, collect pension benefits and then keep working, often at the same job.

"What was going on was absolutely ludicrous," says Kentucky state Rep. Mike Cherry, a Democrat. Kentucky's Legislature last month ended a policy that let workers retire, get rehired and start a second pension in addition to the first.

Double-dipping is legal in nearly every state under existing pension and hiring rules. It is especially common among educators, police officers and others who retire young after 20 to 30 years on the job.

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New Vision for Schools Proposes Broad Role

Sam Dillon:

Randi Weingarten, the New Yorker who is rising to become president of the American Federation of Teachers, says she wants to replace President Bush’s focus on standardized testing with a vision of public schools as community centers that help poor students succeed by offering not only solid classroom lessons but also medical and other services.

Ms. Weingarten, 50, was elected Monday to the presidency of the national teachers union at the union’s annual convention. In a speech minutes later to the delegates gathered in Chicago, Ms. Weingarten criticized the No Child Left Behind law, President Bush’s signature domestic initiative, as “too badly broken to be fixed,” and outlined “a new vision of schools for the 21st century.”

“Can you imagine a federal law that promoted community schools — schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one roof all the services and activities they and their families need?” Ms. Weingarten asked in the speech.

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Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Says Education Was a Primary Motivation for His Inventions

Jeffrey Young:

teve Wozniak helped kick off the personal-computer revolution decades ago when he and Steve Jobs started Apple Computer in a garage in Silicon Valley, and he says education was one of the key uses he saw for computers from the beginning. The eccentric engineer talked about his passion for education and told tales of the early days of Apple during a keynote speech yesterday at Blackboard Inc.’s user conference in Las Vegas.

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Calm Down or Else

Benedict Carey:

The children return from school confused, scared and sometimes with bruises on their wrists, arms or face. Many won’t talk about what happened, or simply can’t, because they are unable to communicate easily, if at all.

"What Tim eventually said," said John Miller, a podiatrist in Allegany, N.Y., about his son, then 12, "was that he didn’t want to go to school because he thought the school was trying to kill him."

Dr. Miller learned that Tim, who has Asperger’s syndrome, was being unusually confrontational in class, and that more than once teachers had held him down on the floor to “calm him down,” according to logs teachers kept to track his behavior; on at least one occasion, adults held Tim prone for 20 minutes until he stopped struggling.

The Millers are suing the district, in part for costs of therapy for their son as a result of the restraints. The district did not dispute the logs but denied that teachers behaved improperly.

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July 16, 2008

Student pours cold water on school reform

Reuters:

A student poured cold water on Chile's unpopular education reform on Monday -- literally.

The 14-year-old schoolgirl threw a pitcher of cold water in Education Minister Monica Jimenez's face at an event to discuss reform of a sector that students and teachers complain is underfunded and neglects the poor.

"They could have thrown a pitcher, a glass pitcher and I could be in hospital now," Jimenez told reporters. "I particularly blame the teachers union. ... If they are inciting acts of violence, they should answer for what happened today."

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Back to school math prep

AZ Central:

We continue our special series this week on preparing your children for the new school year. This year high school students are required to take more math. School Solutions' Kim Covington explains that's no sweat for the students of a Tempe teacher.

A record number of students at Desert Vista High School in Tempe got perfect scores on their SAT. That's 26 students, but another 40 just missed one.

Many of those students attended Desert Vista's popular 4 hour summer math camp. The 5th-8th graders who take part breezed through Algebra in just a few weeks. Teacher Larry Strom started the math camp two years ago. The Math Department Chair says, "we tell them to take Algebra as early as they possibly can."

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Madison Schools TV is Changing

Via a Marcia Standiford email (note that this change is driven by a massive telco giveaway signed into law by Wisconsin Governor Doyle recently):

Dear Parents and Friends of MMSD-TV:

Have you enjoyed seeing your child on MMSD-TV? Do you appreciate having access to live coverage of school board meetings?

Channels 10 and 19, the cable TV service of the Madison Metropolitan School District, are moving. As a result of a recent law deregulating cable television, Charter Cable has decided to move our channels to digital channels 992 and 993 effective August 12, 2008.

What will this mean for you?

To continue seeing Madison Board of Education meetings, high school sporting events, fine arts, school news, newscasts from around the world or any of the other learning services offered by MMSD-TV, you will need a digital TV or digital video recorder (DVR) with a QAM tuner. If you do not have a digital TV, you will need to obtain a set-top digital converter box from Charter. Charter has agreed to provide the box at no charge for the first six months of service to customers UPON SPECIFIC REQUEST, after which Charter will add a monthly fee to your bill for rental of the box.

Be advised, however, that the Charter box is NOT the same box being advertised by broadcasters as a way of receiving digital over-the-air signals after the national conversion to digital which will take place in February, 2009.

Confused and frustrated? - Understandably so. Therefore, we want to help you in making this transition.

Charter Cable is required by law to provide space on its basic tier for community access television from the Madison Schools as well as from the City of Madison and WYOU Community Television. Charter will continue to include MMSD-TV and the other Madison community access channels in their basic cable service at the existing subscription rate. However, the channels will be viewable only -- as noted above --with a digital TV or by renting a digital converter.

The new location for MMSD-TV on channels 992 and 993 will be part of a "public affairs neighborhood", a block of channels 980-999 that will include CSPAN II, CSPAN III, Wisconsin Eye (state government programming), along with other community channels from the Madison and Dane County areas.

What to do?

  • Call Charter customer service at (888) 438-2427 to request a digital converter box at no charge in order to receive your basic service which includes the digital "public affairs neighborhood" channels.
  • Need answers? Send your questions and/or concerns in an email to Tim Vowell, Charter Communications Vice President of Government Relations, at tvowell@chartercom.com. Please send a copy to me at mstandiford@madison.k12.wi.us.
  • Let me know if your contact with Charter is successful. Email me at mstandiford@madison.k12.wi.us or call 663-1969.
  • Call the State of Wisconsin legislative hotline at 1-800-362-9472. Describe your concerns related to cable TV and the new law -- Act 42.

    Most importantly,

  • Keep watching MMSD-TV on channels 10 & 19 until August 12, 2008. After that date, find us at 992 and 993.
Of course we will continue to expand our offerings on the web at www.mmsd.tv. But we want to make sure we reach as many families as possible. This is why MMSD's access to cable TV remains a critical resource. Please help us preserve that resource.

Thank you for your interest. Keep in touch!


Marcia Standiford
Manager of Cable and Video Services
Madison Metropolitan School District
545 W. Dayton St.
Madison, WI 53703
www.mmsd.org/mmsdtv
(608) 663-1969

The local schools should operate a public fiber network within the city. The buildings represent a great 'footprint". It would be great for the schools, and perhaps with some astute legal and economic legwork, a huge win for the city. Another idea for the November referendum.

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Texas high school athletes could receive more credits for sports

Terrence Stutz:

Texas high school students who play football, basketball and others sports could receive twice as much as credit toward graduation under a proposed rule being considered by the State Board of Education.

The proposal — allowing four years of sports to count for credit instead of two — was brought to the board by a coach from Brenham High School, who said new graduation requirements that took effect with freshmen last year discriminate against student athletes by slicing the time available for participation in athletics.

Under the new state requirements — ordered by the Legislature — students need four years each of math, science, English and social studies — the so-called 4x4 core courses — along with their electives and a handful of other required classes such as two years of foreign language and 1 ½ years of physical education.

In all, the number of credits needed to get a diploma will increase from 24 to 26 for students graduating in 2011.

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Peter Schrag: The quick road to math success: Get a bigger whip

Peter Schrag:

There've been lots of complaints that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has neither much interest in education policy, nor the capacity to deal with it. But his precipitous plunge into the algebra wars last week and the state Board of Education's sudden decision to bow to his demand makes you wish that that he had less interest or a lot more capacity.

The leap, in the form of a letter urging the board to require that every eighth-grader take beginning algebra and the board's overnight agreement to mandate it within three years is like trying to make a scrawny horse pull a heavier load with a bigger whip. At best, it won't work; at worst, it will kill the horse.

The state has for some years had an admirable "goal" that every eighth-grader take algebra, combined with a set of incentives for districts to get all students there. The incentives – essentially penalizing schools by reducing a school's Academic Proficiency Index for each student who takes only general math – have worked. More than half of California's eighth-graders now take either algebra or geometry.

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Even background TV can impact kids' attention

Greg Toppo:

Pediatricians have long said children younger than 2 shouldn't watch any television. But in new findings from a small-scale study, researchers say that even having a TV on in the background could be "an environmental hazard" for children.

For the study, released today, researchers observed 50 children, ages 1 to 3, for an hour at a time as they played alone in a small room with a variety of toys. Parents sat nearby, and for half of each session (starting either at the beginning or 30 minutes in), a small TV broadcast a taped episode of Jeopardy.

After videotaping and carefully analyzing the children's reactions, researchers found that kids watched the TV only in snippets but that it modestly shortened their playtime. TV decreased play's intensity and cut by half the amount of time children focused on a given toy.

The researchers chose Jeopardy on the theory that it would be "nearly incomprehensible" to toddlers.

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Back to School For a Penny

Tania Anderson:

Remember as a kid seeing stores put up those "Back to School Sale" signs? I truly hated those happy little announcements. This year kids are seeing those signs earlier than ever thanks to Staples and Office Depot. The two office supply stores officially launched the back to school season in the first week of July with sales on things like notebooks and pencils. For Staples, it was the first time declaring such an event. The date set by Staples was based on historic trends, feedback from parents and schools and the fact that some schools in the South and West start the new school year in July. Plus there has to be a little influence between the two office supply giants since they kicked off their back to school sales within a few days of each other.

But what's so amazing about these sales is that they're pawning off stuff for a mere penny. Both stores are advertising things like a 12-pack of pencil erasers, folders, protractors and No. 2 pencils for 1 cent each. Gee, you could probably go out into the parking lot and find a few pennies on the ground to take advantage of these deals.

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July 15, 2008

Leaders explain schools' gains

Gadi Dechter:

Middle school students at the Crossroads School near Fells Point were evaluated by teachers every single day last school year, with the results driving the next day's instruction.

At East Baltimore's Fort Worthington Elementary, about a quarter of the school's parents turned out for MSA Family Fun Night and sampled questions from the Maryland School Assessments.

Alexander Hamilton Elementary, situated in a West Baltimore neighborhood that the principal calls "gang-infested," started a gifted education program last year to challenge students to learn beyond their grade levels.

The principals of the three schools credit those and myriad other initiatives with making their schools among of the most improved in Baltimore, during a year in which the school system overall posted historic gains on the standardized tests administered under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

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Nerad Details His First-Year Vision To Madison School Board

Channel3000:

For the past two weeks, Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendant Dan Nerad has been learning the ropes in Madison. He said he has been doing a lot of listening and learning.

On Monday, he officially brought his ideas to the Madison School Board, for the first time laying out a vision for his first year as superintendant.

"I guess my hope, over time, is that while I'm learning about the Madison Metropolitan School District that I can also help inform the school district of important new directions I hope we can take over time," said Nerad.

One idea Nerad said he believes should be revisited in Madison is 4-year-old kindergarten.

TJ Mertz has more.

Much more on Madison & 4 Year Old Kindergarden here.

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Cheating on ACT, SAT college entrance exams has few consequences

Carla Rivera:

If the testing firms suspect fraud, they simply cancel the student's score -- but they never tell schools why.

A group of students at a Los Angeles high school is suspected of cheating on the ACT college entrance exam by paying a former student, who used fraudulent identification, to take the tests. The testing agency recently began investigating the claims, which could result in cancellation of scores provided to colleges.

But those colleges will not be told why the scores are invalid, nor will the students' high school be clued in.

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On Being More Like Ted Widerski

I've been convinced that a comment I made on another thread about Ted Widerski deserves to be shared as a post. --LAF


"I'll miss him" only begins to capture it for me. Ted was HUGELY important to the student advocacy work I do in the District. I think I/we won't know -- fully -- what we've lost until the school year begins to unfold.

People have said that Ted was a tireless and “courageous" advocate for TAG students, and that he was. I couldn't agree more. At the same time, I can’t help but think “why should it require boundless courage and limitless persistence simply to get smart kids’ educational needs met?” Sigh.

On a more positive note, it has occurred to me that there are two things each of us could do to honor Ted's memory. The first is to donate to the “Ted Widerski Mathfest Fund." There is no better way to honor Ted than to insure that the mathfests he worked so hard to create, implement and protect KEEP HAPPENING. Send your check -- appropriately marked “Ted Widerski Mathfests” -- to the Foundation for Madison's Public Schools, 455 Science Drive, Madison, WI, 53711.

The second thing each of us could do to honor Ted's memory is to approach the coming school year with the happy intention of becoming more like him. So much of what we are up against in our advocacy work is a matter of misunderstanding, misinformation and misguided attitude. With a change in all of that – and few, if any, more dollars – the situation for our students could be profoundly different.

Practically speaking, what might it mean to "become more like Ted?" Well, here are a few beginning thoughts about that. I’m sure some of you will have many more.

If you are a parent ...

... Make sure your student is being appropriately challenged and learning something at school. Don’t assume they will be fine, “no matter what.”

... If your own child's needs are being well met at school, put your time and energy to the larger cause.

... Depending on your student’s age, advocate for their educational (and other) needs or support their learning how to advocate for themselves.

... Be on the lookout for other students in your child’s classroom who need additional challenge, but who may not have an adult to advocate for them.

... Remember that according to the new state law regarding “gifted and talented” identification, you are a key player!

... Join WATG (Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted) and donate to WCATY (Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth).


If you are a teacher ...

... Don’t always make your bright students learn by themselves.

... Don’t assume your bright students will be “just fine,” no matter what.

... Don’t use your bright students as assistant teachers.

... Make sure your bright students have learning peers.

... Don’t be afraid to create ability-based groups.

... If you do “cooperative learning groups,” make sure that all students are pulling their own weight.

... When a parent expresses concern that their child is bored and under-challenged, take their concern seriously.


If you are an administrator ...

... When a parent expresses concern that their child is bored and under-challenged, take their concern seriously.

... Let your teachers create ability-based groups.

... Make sure every academically talented student in your school is in a classroom with learning peers.

... Support the District’s efforts to implement early identification programs.

... Hire teachers with subject-specific certification (e.g., math and science).

... Familiarize yourself with the Wisconsin statutes on gifted students and gifted education.


If you are a School Board member ...

... Familiarize yourself with the Wisconsin statutes on gifted students and gifted education.

... Get some of the District data Ted requested repeatedly. A good start would be several years' worth of algebra data, broken down by letter grade, so that we can finally compare "C's and above" with "D's and below." Ted was adamant in his belief that a "D" in algebra was not a passing grade, that a student who earned a "D" in algebra had not learned anything (had maybe even gotten the "D" rather than an "F" simply for showing up). He saw grouping the "D's" with the higher grades as yet another thing the District did to look better in its own eyes, but at the expense of students’ genuine learning.

... Work to reverse the homogenization of high school curriculum that has occurred in some of the District’s high schools in recent years. In your heart of hearts, you know it’s not the answer to the problem.

... Insist on empirical support for curricular and structural changes in our schools, both before and after changes are made. Make sure you understand what the data are saying. Example: West High School’s English 10 curriculum was implemented in the fall of 2006 in the hopes that certain groups of students would take more rigorous, writing-intensive English electives as juniors and seniors. Do the data indicate that that has happened?

... Whichever side of the isthmus you live on, embrace the schools on the other side and stop this silly “east-side-versus-west-side” thing. (No more statements like “You West parents have nothing to complain about,” like I heard from one recently retired BOE member on multiple occasions.) We’re all in this together – period – and those of you who are on the School Board, especially, have an obligation to students and families from ALL corners of the District. (O.K., that’s me talking, not Ted – but I’m sure Ted would have agreed with me 100%.)

... Always -- and I mean always -- put our kids' needs ahead of politics.


If you are a School Board member who talked a lot about the need for improved “gifted” identification in your campaign ...

... Become the District’s resident expert on the new state law regarding the identification of “gifted and talented” students (http://dpi.wi.gov/cal/gifted.html ). To that end, keep abreast of complaints filed with the DPI by parent groups in other Wisconsin school districts over their district’s failure to comply with this and other “gifted and talented” statutes and rules.

... Become the MMSD’s champion of early identification efforts. Make sure there is financial and other support for efforts being developed to comply with the new state identification law – for example, plans for the universal assessment of all MMSD first graders (that’s every student!) in 2008-09. Help expand the effort to include third graders next year.


If you are a special education advocate ...

... Become a member of the Council for Exceptional Children, a national organization that includes “talented and gifted” children in its special education mission.


If you are a parent who has withdrawn their child from the Madison schools because they were not being challenged ...

... Write to the School Board and the new Superintendent and tell them your family's story. Tell them why you "went private" or are homeschooling.


If you are a student ...

... Familiarize yourself with the Gifted Children's Bill of Rights.” (Just google it.)

... Fulfill your intellectual potential, insist that your school meet your educational needs, choose work that you love, live your life with integrity and love, and do not be afraid to “speak Truth to power.”

... In short, grow up to be like Ted!

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Nobelist Slams Education

Physics Nobel prize winner Dr. Leon Lederman criticizes the state of science education in the U.S. In this ScienCentral video, he explains who's to blame and what it will take to make a change.

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Algebra Rules

SF Chronicle:

One thing both sides of the math-wars debate should agree on is this: Educators can set high standards, but the higher standards only help students if the students have a base of knowledge from which they can rise. In 1997, when the state board of education issued math standards that called for eighth graders to learn Algebra 1, they knew that California teens could not instantly meet that goal.

Rather than set a strict mandate for eighth grade Algebra 1, the board used other policies to set incentives for moving more students into higher-level math, and disincentives for failing to do so - with the goal of having all eighth graders learn Algebra 1 by 2014. The ratio of eighth graders who took Algebra 1 or even higher level math grew from 16 percent in 2000 to 52 percent today. Those 52 percent of students are in a strong position to make it through the college track. Supporters believe this progress - especially the doubling of African American students in eighth-grade Algebra 1 - represents a coup in the struggle to close the achievement gap.

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Math Meltdown

Patrick Welsh:

Summertime means school for an increasing number of high school students who have struggled in their math courses. But the system could be contributing to the kids’ poor performances.

Sam Cooke once cooed: "It's summertime, and the living is easy."

Tell that to the increasing number of middle and high school students who will be sweating out summer school this year because of their meltdown in math.

Related: Math Forum.

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Former Math Teacher's Lesson of the Day

Claudia Ayers:

It isn't absurd enough that we test high school students with a High School Exit Exam that is pretty much on a par with the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) required of teachers, but now we are all congratulating ourselves with a decision to test eighth graders for algebra. At least state schools chief Jack O'Connell has learned from his own past mistakes and opposed this decision. If only he had the guts to say he blew it on advocating for the exit exam, which is not only a complete waste of tens of millions of dollars, but sends more and more kids into the streets and trouble with the law when they fail to graduate because they do not test as well as others. (About 10 percent of high school students must "fail," otherwise it isn't a "test.")

I tutored algebra to younger students when I myself was in high school. Later I taught it in public high schools for nearly 20 years, concurrently with other math courses, including geometry, pre-algebra and seventh and eighth grade math. I taught in some of the highest achieving, and some of the lowest achieving middle and high schools in the state. So, maybe my perspective is broader than the average citizen's. Still, anyone who thinks it is a good idea to begin testing all eighth graders in algebra is simply delusional. It would be more PC to say uninformed, but I am at wit's end.

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School Testing Service Fiasco May Result in Firm Being Sacked

Nicola Woolcock:

The fiasco over delayed school test results affecting millions of children could result in the company responsible being sacked and forced to pay back tens of millions of pounds.

Ken Boston, the head of the exams regulator, said after an emergency hearing of MPs yesterday, that the testing system was under stress and needed modernising. He added that problems were unlikely to be resolved in time for next year’s tests.

Thousands of parents are expected to challenge the results, encouraged by the adverse publicity surrounding this year’s exams.

This week Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said schools were reporting “all kinds of problems” with marking, and told parents that they should not rely on SATs [national curriculum test] results as the sole indicator of their child’s progress. He urged schools to give parents teachers’ assessments of pupils, as well as SATs results, and advised that these be treated as “provisional”.

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Referendum Climate: Madison Mayor Orders 5% Cut in 2009 City Budget

A possible Fall 2008 Madison School District Referendum may occur amid changes in City spending (and property taxes). Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's Memo to City Managers includes this [PDF]:

This is the most challenging budget year I have seen in six years and it appears to be among the most challenging in two decades or more. High fuel prices combined with lagging revenues associated with the economic downturn and increases in debt service and other costs will force us to work hard just to maintain current services. Other typical cost increases in areas such as health insurance and wages will create additional pressure on our budget situation.

Based on current estimates, our “cost to continue” budget would result in an unacceptably high increase of about 10% for taxes on the average home and a levy increase of around 15%.
Via Isthmus.

Related:

One would hope that a referendum initiative would address a number of simmering issues, including math, curriculum reduction, expanded charter options, a look at the cost and effectiveness of reading recovery, perhaps a reduction in the local curriculum creation department and the elimination of the controversial report card initiative. Or, will we see the now decades old "same service approach" to MMSD spending growth?

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July 14, 2008

Priorities for the Harford County School Board

Madison Park:

Patrick L. Hess, a lifelong Fallston resident, has assumed leadership of the Harford County Board of Education after the resignation of Vice President Salina M. Williams.

Hess graduated from North Harford High School and is the sixth generation of his family to live in Harford County. His wife, Lynn, is a kindergarten teacher at Jarrettsville Elementary School, and his three children have graduated from Harford County public schools.

Hess was named to the board in 2004, after board member Karen L. Wolf resigned. He was tapped to finish the remaining two years of Wolf's term. Hess was reappointed in 2006 by then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to serve a full five-year term on the board.

Hess is chief executive officer of Operations Management Inc., a restaurant management company that oversees Denny's franchises. He recently sat for an interview with The Su

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California's algebra fracas symbolizes bigger mess

Dan Walters:

This week's dust-up over whether all of California's eighth-graders should be taking algebra encapsulates one of the state's overarching educational dilemmas: Is it wise to set educational standards that apply to all students, even though they have an astonishing and ever-widening array of innate abilities and cultural, economic, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and advocates of educational rigor are hailing the state Board of Education's vote to impose the algebra requirement in response to pressure from federal officials about creating more uniformity in standards and testing.

However, state schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell, who wanted to modify the decade-old state policy of introducing eighth-graders to algebra to comply with the federal demands, claims that the decree will leave many kids behind because the state is unprepared, educationally and financially, to implement it.

The conflict echoes, ironically, the controversy over the decree that high-schoolers must pass an exit exam before being awarded graduation diplomas - a standard that O'Connell vigorously championed as legislator and state schools chief.

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Beyond Games and the Future of Learning

Brainy Gamer:

James Gee kicked off the 4th Games, Learning, and Society Conference with a talk entitled “Beyond Games & the Future of Learning.” Gee is Professor of Literacy at Arizona State University and the author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003) and Why Video Games Are Good For Your Soul (2005).

Gee sees the current U.S. educational system as inadequate to the task of addressing the problems of an increasingly complex world. He stated that “21st century learning must be about understanding complex systems,” and he believes many video games do a better job at this than the antiquated sender-receiver teaching model that dominates American classrooms.

“We're at the point where we must make choices. What do we want to be about?” Gee sees two separate educational systems operating today: one a traditional approach to learning; the other what Gee calls “passion communities.” In Gee's view, the latter produce real knowledge. Video games, virtual worlds and online social networks provide environments in which theses passion communities can form and thrive.

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Forget About the Achievement Gap: High Achieving Students in the Era of No Child Left Behind

Jay Matthews:

"The narrowing of test score gaps, although an important accomplishment," Loveless writes, should not "overshadow the languid performance trends of high-achieving students." He adds: "Their test scores are not being harmed during the NCLB era, but they are not flourishing either. Gaps are narrowing because the gains of low-achieving students are outstripping those of high achievers by a factor of two or three to one. The nation has a strong interest in developing the talents of its best students to their fullest to foster the kind of growth at the top end of the achievement distribution that has been occurring at the bottom end."
Ann Duffett, Steve Farkas & Tom Loveless on the "Robin Hood Effect":
This publication reports the results of the first two (of five) studies of a multifaceted research investigation of the state of high-achieving students in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era.

Part I: An Analysis of NAEP Data, authored by Brookings Institution scholar Tom Loveless, examines achievement trends for high-achieving students (defined, like low-achieving students, by their performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP) since the early 1990s and, in more detail, since 2000.

Part II: Results from a National Teacher Survey, authored by Steve Farkas and Ann Duffett of Farkas Duffett Research Group, reports on teachers' own views of how schools are serving high-achieving pupils in the NCLB era.

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Kids Urged to Walk, Bike to School

Melissa Kossler Dutton:

Megan Schroeder rides her bike or walks to school to do her part to help the planet.
She also likes the incentives that her school, Bear Creek Elementary, uses to reward kids who ditch mom or dad's car in favor of biking or walking.

"You get treats, too — usually some kind of food. I won a bike at the awards ceremony," said Megan, 8, of Boulder, Colo. "Since I like animals, I want to save the environment."

Across the country, schools are encouraging families to forgo their cars to promote healthy habits, relieve traffic congestion around school buildings and reduce auto emissions. Students who live too far to walk or bike are asked to form car pools, use public transportation or walk part of the way.

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July 13, 2008

Madison School Board Update

Hi all,

I hope you are enjoying you summer. Below is the school board update. Please let me know if you have any questions.

1. Our new superintendent, Dan Nerad, took over on July 1. Dan has spent a great deal of time meeting with board members, staff and community members. The transition has gone really well. One of the reasons for the seamless transition is that Dan committed 10 days prior to starting in Madison, to visit the district and meet people and learn about many of the programs/plans. He also spent a few weekends in Madison attending school and neighborhood events.

2. You will start to hear talk of a referendum in November as there is a community group starting to form in support of this action. At this point in time, the Board has not had any discussions on a future referendum. We will have a meeting on July 28 to start the discussion on this topic. The budget gap for the 09/10 school year is projected to be approximately $9.2M. Dan Nerad has our business office reviewing numbers in preparation for our discussion. IF, after our discussions and public hearing, we vote to go to referendum in November, the question(s) are due to the clerk's office in early September. There will be an opportunity for public input. There is quite a bit of discussion that will take place in a short period of time. If you have any questions/comments, please let me know.

Hi all,

I hope you are enjoying you summer. Below is the school board update. Please let me know if you have any questions.

1. Our new superintendent, Dan Nerad, took over on July 1. Dan has spent a great deal of time meeting with board members, staff and community members. The transition has gone really well. One of the reasons for the seamless transition is that Dan committed 10 days prior to starting in Madison, to visit the district and meet people and learn about many of the programs/plans. He also spent a few weekends in Madison attending school and neighborhood events.

2. You will start to hear talk of a referendum in November as there is a community group starting to form in support of this action. At this point in time, the Board has not had any discussions on a future referendum. We will have a meeting on July 28 to start the discussion on this topic. The budget gap for the 09/10 school year is projected to be approximately $9.2M. Dan Nerad has our business office reviewing numbers in preparation for our discussion. IF, after our discussions and public hearing, we vote to go to referendum in November, the question(s) are due to the clerk's office in early September. There will be an opportunity for public input. There is quite a bit of discussion that will take place in a short period of time. If you have any questions/comments, please let me know.

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Students likely to fail high school exit exam can be identified as early as 4th grade, study says

Seema Mehta, via a kind reader's email:

As early as fourth grade, students who will be at risk of failing the high school exit exam – a state requirement to earn a diploma – can be identified based on grades, classroom behavior and test scores, according to a new study released Tuesday.

The findings, based on an extensive study of student achievement in San Diego schools, call into question the effectiveness of aiming significant efforts and tens of millions of dollars at struggling high school seniors and older students to help them pass the exam.

“From a political standpoint, such spending seems necessary. However, our results strongly suggest that these 11th-hour interventions by themselves are unlikely to yield the intended results,” according to the report by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Instead, the authors suggested, “moving a portion of these tutoring dollars to struggling students in earlier grades – when the students are still in school – could be a wise choice. An ounce of prevention could indeed be worth a pound of cure.”

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Catch 'Em Young

James J. Heckman, via a reader's email:

It is a rare public policy initiative that promotes fairness and social justice and, at the same time, promotes productivity in the economy and in society at large. Investing in disadvantaged young children is such a policy. The traditional argument for providing enriched environments for disadvantaged young children is based on considerations of fairness and social justice. But another argument can be made that complements and strengthens the first one. It is based on economic efficiency, and it is more compelling than the equity argument, in part because the gains from such investment can be quantified—and they are large.

There are many reasons why investing in disadvantaged young children has a high economic return. Early interventions for disadvantaged children promote schooling, raise the quality of the work force, enhance the productivity of schools, and reduce crime, teenage pregnancy and welfare dependency. They raise earnings and promote social attachment. Focusing solely on earnings gains, returns to dollars invested are as high as 15 percent to 17 percent.

The equity-efficiency trade-off that plagues so many public policies can be avoided because of the importance of skills in the modern economy and the dynamic nature of the skill-acquisition process. A large body of research in social science, psychology and neuroscience shows that skill begets skill; that learning begets learning. There is also substantial evidence of critical or sensitive periods in the lives of young children. Environments that do not cultivate both cognitive and noncognitive abilities (such as motivation, perseverance and self-restraint) place children at an early disadvantage. Once a child falls behind in these fundamental skills, he is likely to remain behind. Remediation for impoverished early environments becomes progressively more costly the later it is attempted.

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July 12, 2008

The Wrong Education Fix

Wall Street Journal Editorial:

President Bush has often spoken about education reform as a civil rights issue. So we're not entirely surprised to see civil rights groups now defending the No Child Left Behind law against attempts to gut its most effective provisions.

Last month, Representative Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, introduced the NCLB Recess Until Reauthorization Act, which would essentially suspend the law's accountability provisions but not the funding. Under Mr. Graves's bill, schools would no longer have to file progress reports that expose achievement gaps between kids of different races, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds.

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College Board Cancels One School's AP Scores After Cheating Scandal

Eddy Ramirez:

A cheating scandal at one Southern California high school has prompted the College Board to invalidate the scores of 690 Advanced Placement exams. Now, hundreds of students from Trabuco Hills High School in Orange County are protesting the decision. The Los Angeles Times is calling the imbroglio "perhaps the most memorable in Southern California since 1982, when the scores of more than a dozen students in Jaime Escalante's AP calculus class at Garfield High School were invalidated because of suspected cheating. The students retook the exams and passed, and the events were later turned into the film Stand and Deliver."
Much more, here.

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Boston Considers 2 Pilot High Schools

James Vaznis:

The Boston School Committee will soon weigh proposals to open two new pilot schools, reinvigorating a more than decade-old Boston school program that Governor Deval Patrick is using as a model for statewide improvements.

The leaders of the two high schools would be able to exercise greater control over budget, staffing, curriculum, and governance, while working under fewer restraints from teachers unions.

Pilot schools, along with the governor's proposed readiness schools, are similar to charter schools, except that charter schools function as independent school districts, while pilot and readiness schools are, or would be, overseen by local school committees. Patrick recently proposed creating 40 readiness schools across the state, drawing upon the pilot school model.

Boston's two proposed schools, Harbor Pilot High School and Mary Lyon Pilot High School, draw on the popularity of two lower-grade schools, one of which is a pilot school, Harbor School in Dorchester. The other school is Mary Lyon K-8 School in Brighton. Collectively, the two new schools would serve about 600 students.

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July 11, 2008

India plans massive technical education push

EETimes:

The government is launching a three-year initiative to boost technical education.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development will head the effort designed to overhaul India's education system, which lags other developing countries. Officials said the effort aims to improve the quality of Indian education by expanding the capacity of institutions and creating new ones.

Regional, social and gender disparities in higher and technical education are also being addressed in the new strategy, which is being bolstered by a nine-fold budget increase for technical education. At the same time, the ministry said, regional governments need to do more to support technical education.

The federal government plans to establish eight new Indian Institutes of Technology, known for producing top researchers for global technology firms. Also planned are two more Indian Institutes of Science, Education and Research. Twenty new Indian Institutes of Information Technology are also planned.

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Economy Takes Toll On Education Funding

Larry Abramson:

Twenty-two Michigan districts are facing deficits. Don Wotruba of the Michigan Association of School Boards says that as operating costs go up, there's only one way to cut staff.

"A lot of our younger teachers are the ones who get laid off, because they are the lowest on the pay scale as far as the union goes," he says. "And then those [teachers] leave the state to go work somewhere else. So we are having the problem of eating our young a little bit."

The irony is that Michigan legislators this year approved a small increase in per pupil spending, but it's not enough to keep up with the cost of education. Combine that with the fact that enrollment is declining rapidly in places like Detroit, and you can see why educators are running out of hair to pull out.

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Teacher's Pay: Better marks, more money

The Economist

BAD schools, the left insists, are bad because they do not have enough money. The nation’s capital somewhat undermines this theory. Spending per pupil in Washington, DC, is a whopping 50% higher than the national average, yet the city’s public schools are atrocious. If it were a state, its pupils’ test scores would rank dead last.

Some schools struggle with the basics, such as discipline. Until last year, for example, the Johnson Middle School “had a nightclub on every floor”, says Clarence Burrell, a youth adviser at the school. There would be dozens of kids hanging out on each corridor during classes, schoolboys “with their shirts off getting massages” from female classmates and fights “all the time”, he says.

Mr Burrell, a tough-looking reformed convict, was hired by LifeSTARTS, a local charity, to help restore order. With his four colleagues, he pays attention to the most disruptive kids. He listens to them. He nudges them to pipe down and study. He offers his own “hectic” life as a cautionary tale. “Jail is ten times worse than school,” he warns young troublemakers. “It’s a long time, just you in that cell with a bunch of dudes.”

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School districts misled on risks of investments, lawyer says

Amy Hetzner & Avrum Lank:

In 2006, the five districts - Kenosha Unified, Kimberly Area, Waukesha, West Allis-West Milwaukee and Whitefish Bay - purchased complex financial vehicles called collateralized debt obligations through district-run trusts. The value of the CDOs has plummeted over the last year, triggering calls for the districts to contribute millions more dollars in collateral to avoid a drop in income from quarterly dividends.

Kantas declined to name which of the districts had hired his firm.

But officials with the Waukesha and Kimberly districts said they had hired the law firm, Houston-based Shepherd, Smith, Edwards & Kantas, although they did not know how many of the other districts also are involved.

Waukesha School Board member Joseph Como declined to say how the district was paying the law firm. But Gary Kvasnica, director of business services for the Kimberly district, said his district is paying the law firm a fee of "a few thousand dollars" for its investigation of the investment.

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July 10, 2008

Teachers learn principles to pass on to in-demand students

Kathleen Gallagher:

How many teachers does it take to make a pingpong ball launcher?

More than one, 84 high school and middle school teachers participating in a two-week training class at the Milwaukee School of Engineering found out.

On Friday, they finished learning how to work cooperatively to make pingpong ball launchers and marble sorters, and to rip apart everything from flashlights to strap hinges so they could remake them to work better.

As a result, each is now certified to teach one Project Lead the Way class in digital electronics, civil engineering and architecture, or another engineering topic.

The Project Lead the Way-trained teachers are part of a push that powerful forces in the state have gotten behind.

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Commuter College Goes Residential

Dorie Turner:

The neighborhood around Georgia State University was for years a maze of boarded up storefronts, aging buildings and parking lots that emptied at the close of each day.

But the downtown Atlanta campus is shedding its sleepy commuter school image thanks to plush new dorms, gleaming classroom buildings, Greek life and, yes, even football.

Georgia State and other former night schools across the country are transforming into more traditional college campuses to boost enrollment and gain prestige. And each is creating a thriving community that spills over into surrounding neighborhoods, drawing restaurants and retail into once empty streets.

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Taking Aim at Youth Gun Violence

Rodrigo Zamith:

A new initiative for Minneapolis and Hennepin County will increase penalties for juveniles caught with firearms, both replica and real.

Minneapolis and Hennepin County officials hope to reduce juvenile gun crime this summer by stiffening penalties for youths caught with BB guns, real guns or replicas.

The new Juvenile Gun Offender Initiative was announced Tuesday by Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman and others. It will also increase enforcement of youth curfew laws, replica firearms ordinances and supervision of juveniles on probation for gun offenses.

The new rules apply to offenders between 10 and 17 years old. First-time offenders with a real gun will be given probation, four to six weeks of out-of-home placement and 40 hours of education on the dangers and effects of guns. If the requirements aren't met, youths will be given four to six months of out-of-home placement.

Gangs & School Violence Forum.

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VIRTUAL SCHOOLS SEE STRONG GROWTH, CALLS FOR MORE OVERSIGHT

Ben Arnoldy:

Half of courses in Grades 9 to 12 will be delivered online by 2019, predicts a new report.

Rather than send her kids off on the yellow bus, Briana LeClaire has school come to her home. Her kids attend a virtual public school, connecting online to teachers and coursework. Everything from books to microscopes to radish seeds arrives via brown trucks.

Mrs. LeClaire describes it as the 21st-century, middle-class version of the private tutor. Her 6th-grader can move quickly through her strong subjects, such as literature, and spend more time on her weaker areas, like math.

Enrollment in online classes last year reached the 1 million mark, growing 22 times the level seen in 2000, according to the North American Council for Online Learning. That's just the start, says a new paper by the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. Its authors predict that by 2019 half of courses in Grades 9 to 12 will be delivered online.

Related: Virtual Courses Rile Teachers Union by Susan Troller.

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July 9, 2008

Madison teacher's impact fondly recalled

Tamira Madsen

In his job as an educator, Ted Widerski left an indelible imprint on the lives of many Madison Metropolitan School District students. Friends and family are remembering Widerski as an exemplary teacher and person as they come to terms with his unexpected death at age 56 on June 29. Widerski suffered a massive heart attack at his Cambridge home.

Widerski was so influential to Bailey Wundrow during her prep years at La Follette High School that she followed in his footsteps and became a math teacher. Besides being Wundrow's homeroom teacher for four years, Widerski laid a strong foundation for Wundrow with math as she prepared to pursue an education degree at his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wundrow, a 2002 La Follette graduate, recently completed her second year teaching math at Verona High School. She said Widerski set an example she wanted to follow. "He enjoyed what he did every day," Wundrow said. "He sold me on that end of teaching. He wrote me a letter of recommendation for (UW) Madison and I told him I wanted to teach. He always joked, 'I'll wait and when I retire and you graduate, you can have my job.' "

Widerski got a bachelor's degree in 1973 from UW-Madison and received a master's degree in math education from UW-Milwaukee in 1976. He taught in Green Bay and Waterloo and eventually became a school principal in Waterloo before starting in Madison 12 years ago. Widerski taught at La Follette for seven years and joined the school district's Talented and Gifted (TAG) program three years ago as a resource teacher. Widerski oversaw programming for talented students at the middle and high school levels.

He also was instrumental in creating the district's first MathFests, events that gave students the opportunity to compete individually and in groups to decipher math problems. Welda Simousek, who will retire in August as coordinator of the Talented and Gifted program, said her staff will create a fund in Widerski's name so the MathFest competition can be held on an annual basis.

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Education: Where's the Pride; Where's the Shame?

William Falzett III

I live in a small town, the kind of town many parents seek out in an effort to raise their children away from the precocious material culture of the suburbs, and the tough third world neighborhoods in and around the cities. We have successfully escaped most of that stuff in our small town, but we have not been able to escape the creeping clutches of political correctness.

My daughter is in the third grade, and recently came home with an assignment to prepare a presentation about a famous historical figure. One of her favorite films "A Night at the Museum" includes a part about Sacajawea, the famous native American, working mother, and guide of the Lewis and Clark expedition. We suggested Sacajawea would be a good choice for her project. She worked on it over a two week period, researching on the Internet, reading a book we bought, and preparing visual aids. She was very excited about the project, and practiced the presentation over and over again at home. After her open house event, I asked what kind of grade she got on it, to which she flatly replied she had gotten 102, an A+. I was surprised by her lack of enthusiasm, so I asked how her grade compared to the other kids. She told me she did not know, because kids are not allowed to share their grades with other students.

A little probing exposed this as a politically correct "don't ask; don't tell" rule I have encountered many other times in speaking to the kids about school. Very simply it has no purpose but to ensure no one gets hurt feelings or diminished self-esteem over poor performance. The children are taught that expressions of pride for performance are bad, and there is no shame in performing poorly. Poor performance, mediocrity, and outright failure are all treated the same. Little or no effort is equivalent to diligence, and there is therefore little incentive in the system to perform. Kids learn they can get by doing the bare minimum. Curiously there seems to be no similar treatment of performance when it comes to school sports. The poorest performers are often cut from the team, while the gifted advance, often accompanied by extreme celebration, aggressive coaching, poor sportsmanship and in-your-face trash-talking. The message seems to be that to be good in sports is serious and worth bragging about, but being excellent in academics is not.

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Tennessee 2nd in U.S. for texting and driving

Marti Davis:

Almost nine of 10 Americans agree that texting while driving spells trouble, yet South Carolina and Tennessee lead the nation in those who admit to sending or receiving text messages while behind the wheel.

A national survey of nearly 5,000 cell-phone users, released this week by Common Knowledge Research Services for the Vlingo Corp., revealed that Tennessee's text-messaging motorists are topped only by those in South Carolina.

A bill that would have made driving while texting, or DWT, illegal failed to pass the Tennessee Legislature in March. So for now, at least, Tennessee's text messengers can go on typing with their thumbs while steering with their pinkies, perhaps assisted by their knees.

"Clearly it's an enormous danger for anybody to be texting while driving," said Don Lindsey, longtime safety expert for AAA of East Tennessee. "Not only do you have the distraction of somebody thinking about what you're going to say, you either have to either feel with your thumbs those little itty-bitty buttons or, worse, look down on the phone and do it."

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Girl Becomes Teen Driving Statistic

Brian Hicks:

When she got her permit on Monday, Cushire Akabidavis had license to drive on some of the most dangerous roads in the nation, governed by a state with some of the weakest teen driving laws.

Within minutes she became another young victim of that volatile mix.

Drivers between the ages of 15 and 17 were involved in 64 traffic fatalities and more than 8,400 injuries in 2006, according to a study by the motorist club AAA.

Those accidents cost taxpayers $629 million, roughly the price of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.

"South Carolina is in the top three worst states in the country for driving, and they have some of the worst laws in dealing with teen driving," said Tom Crosby, vice president for communications at AAA Carolinas.

"This is the state that would not even pass a law to prevent teens from texting while driving.

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Teacher Mentoring & Student Achievement

Jonah Rockoff:

As a first-year TFA teacher in Charlotte, it sounds like Guarino experienced some sporadic and haphazard mentoring. It’s an experience from which we can learn. She references four different mentors giving her advice with four different visions of what their roles were. Four mentors?!?! Egads! That might sound like an embarrassment of riches, but certainly it isn't if the mentors are operating at cross-purposes and if they haven't been trained for the role.

Guarino is correct in saying that "Mentoring is more complicated than it seems." That’s a lesson that policymakers and district leaders need to learn. It is not enough simply to require mentoring. It’s not enough merely to assign a mentor to every new teacher. There’s much more that goes into designing induction and mentoring programs to produce the desired impact on teaching and learning.

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Young Workers Flee Midwestern States

Celeste Headlee:

Upper Midwestern states are in danger of losing a precious economic commodity: young people. Many are leaving for other parts of the country after finishing school. Without young, educated workers, there's little incentive for businesses to locate in economically hard-hit states.
audio

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Illinois' Early Childhood Asset Map

Lorne Leonard:

Young people benefit greatly from high-quality early education, a fact that prompted the State of Illinois to enact Preschool for All (PFA) legislation two years ago. Signed into law by governor Rod R. Blagojevich, PFA aims to make preschool available for all the state's three- and four-year-olds by 2011.

To help agencies equitably plan services and allocate monies for PFA based on where needs are greatest, the Illinois Early Learning Council requested the creation of an interactive, Web-based tool to compile the relevant data on early care and education services. The result: the Illinois Early Childhood Asset Map (IECAM), a GIS Web application developed by the Early Childhood and Parenting (ECAP) Collaborative and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). ECAP worked on the project with Chicago Metropolis 2020, a business-backed civic organization.

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July 8, 2008

Mystery illness fells young man

Beth Walton:

But to get her son's mysterious malady diagnosed, a mother must battle some of the area's top hospitals.

School had just started for the year and Cole Haakana could hardly sit still in his fifth-grade classroom. Today, he was going to a friend's house and they were going to walk into town and get ice cream.
But when school let out later that day and the two boys walked the winding neighborhood roads that follow Lake Minnetonka's shoreline, Cole needed to stop and rest. The 10-year-old boy—who spent nearly all his free time riding his BMX bike, fishing, and playing baseball—suddenly felt weak.

He was wracked by a cough so scary that his friend's mother called Cole's mom.

Carrie Halvorson wasn't worried at first. It was September 2005, the kids were back in school, and Cole had probably just picked up some type of bug. They'd wait it out over the weekend.

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Advertisers in Touch with Teen's Cellphones

Alana Semuels:

McGraw receives daily text messages from Seventeen magazine about fashion, including tips about what to wear to the prom. She planned to take the magazine's suggestion to wear a brightly colored outfit and be prepared for "dress malfunctions." "When the texts recommend a certain look that sounds good, I will try it out, but it doesn't always mean buying something," the 17-year-old Laguna Niguel resident said.

Yakking teens and phones have been inseparable for decades. The difference today is that teens use their cellphones for a lot more than just talking. It has become a palm-size entertainment and information center increasingly consuming their time and attention. Advertisers are realizing that if they want to reach teens, they need their number -- literally.

"They're not watching TV, you're not reaching them in other places," said Andrew Miller, chief executive of Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising network. "Mobile is where they congregate."

This year, shy escorts can buy (for 99 cents) a preproduced video of a guy asking a girl to the prom ("We'd take amazing prom pictures together," he says) and then send it via mobile phone to ask a girl out, thanks to Venice-based Mogreet Inc.His nervous date can visit Cosmo Girl's mobile phone site and look at the prom section to find out how to say "No" to alcohol. And she can go to PromGirl.com to download a widget that lets her browse for prom dresses on her phone without burning up valuable Internet minutes.

Alana Semuels:

McGraw receives daily text messages from Seventeen magazine about fashion, including tips about what to wear to the prom. She planned to take the magazine's suggestion to wear a brightly colored outfit and be prepared for "dress malfunctions." "When the texts recommend a certain look that sounds good, I will try it out, but it doesn't always mean buying something," the 17-year-old Laguna Niguel resident said.

Yakking teens and phones have been inseparable for decades. The difference today is that teens use their cellphones for a lot more than just talking. It has become a palm-size entertainment and information center increasingly consuming their time and attention. Advertisers are realizing that if they want to reach teens, they need their number -- literally.

"They're not watching TV, you're not reaching them in other places," said Andrew Miller, chief executive of Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising network. "Mobile is where they congregate."

This year, shy escorts can buy (for 99 cents) a preproduced video of a guy asking a girl to the prom ("We'd take amazing prom pictures together," he says) and then send it via mobile phone to ask a girl out, thanks to Venice-based Mogreet Inc.His nervous date can visit Cosmo Girl's mobile phone site and look at the prom section to find out how to say "No" to alcohol. And she can go to PromGirl.com to download a widget that lets her browse for prom dresses on her phone without burning up valuable Internet minutes.

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July 7, 2008

Attention Goes a Long Way at a School, Small by Design

Jennifer Medina:

They sighed with relief when the college applications were completed, and celebrated when the acceptance letters poured in. But even after graduation on Thursday, one more job remained for the high school’s college counselor and principal: hound their students to make sure they have completed every last task to enroll in their college classes in the fall.

So it goes at the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where many in the school’s first graduating class of 79 seniors are from the city’s poorest neighborhoods, and have struggled academically for years. Yet they received the kind of personal attention more commonly associated with the priciest prep schools.

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein has made new small high schools like Law and Justice a centerpiece of his effort to overhaul the system, saying students who get more personal attention will have more success in the classroom. But many of these schools have struggled with problems of high faculty turnover or of sharing space with other schools. Still, when Education Department officials say the strategy is working, they point to examples like Thursday’s graduation at Law and Justice, where 93 percent of the senior class — nearly all collegebound — collected their diplomas, far higher than the city’s graduation rate of roughly 50 percent.

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School Choice: Is Milwaukee still state-of-the-art

Anneliese Dickman:

Milwaukee has long been called "ground zero" of education reform in America, due mostly to our nearly two-decade-long "experiment" with publicly-funded private school vouchers. Now New Orleans, LA (NOLA) threatens to revoke our title as the epicenter of school choice by heeding the lessons learned here in Milwaukee and advancing the policy design with its new voucher program.

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is set to sign the nation's fifth voucher program into law, allowing impoverished students in under-performing New Orleans public schools to leave for other options. The NOLA program's legislation looks designed to avoid many of the failings of Milwaukee's program: it borrows certain elements of our program, building on Milwaukee's strengths, yet limits our deficiencies.

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The Two Worlds of Advanced Placement

Jay Matthews:

Arguing about Advanced Placement, the college-level program found in most U.S. high schools, can be confusing. Some critics say AP courses and tests, like the similar but smaller International Baccalaureate and Cambridge programs, are too deep for most high school students. Other critics say they are too shallow. Some say AP teachers follow a boring, trivia-filled script. Others say AP teachers are the most creative and engaging instructors they know.

Two well-crafted op-ed pieces, by Chicago high school student Tom Stanley-Becker in the Los Angeles Times and by Stanford University graduate fellow Jack Schneider in the Christian Science Monitor, have recently illuminated this split. They point toward a more intelligent way of seeing AP and other college-level high school courses as a useful whole, rather than as large and clumsy devices with contrary parts.

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An Interview with San Diego Superintendent Terry Grier: On New Endeavors

Michael F. Shaughnessy:

1) Terry, you have just taken over as Superintendent of San Diego Public School. How did this come about?

Late last year, I was conducted by the search firm conducing the San Diego Unified School District's Superintendent search to determine my interest.I had served as Superintendent of the 71,000 student Guilford County School District, Greensboro, NC, for the past eight years.I was in 'good standing' with the GCS school board, enjoyed my job, and had many friends in the Guilford County community.After reviewing the San Diego job description and researching the district's history, challenges, and opportunities, I thought my experiences and background would be a good match.I flew to San Diego and met with the board of education and was impressed with their passion for educating all children to much higher levels.Following an initial interview, the process gained speed. My wife Nancy and I were invited back to a second interview the following week.Two days later, we were notified that SDUSD board members wanted to visit Guilford County the following weekend.Following their visit, we began contract negotiations.

Much more on Terry Grier here.

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State curriculum on legalities of parenting coming to Texas high schools this fall

Karen Ayres Smith:

Do you know the difference between an "alleged father" and a "presumed father?" Your child soon will.

The Texas attorney general's office has created a new parenting curriculum that will be required in every public high school this fall. It will cover everything from the legalese of paternity to dealing with relationship violence.

State officials say the goal is twofold: They want to teach teenage parents their legal rights and they want to show other students the difficulties of being a parent in hopes that they'll wait to have children.

The program, which has already drawn some skepticism, promises to bring personal and family values out of the home and into the classroom.

"The purpose is to help young people make responsible decisions about their futures," said Janece Rolfe of the attorney general's child support division. "What we're hoping to do is prevent children from having to enter the child support system."

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O Father, Where Art Thou?

Joshua Alston:

Ta-Nehisi Coates grew up in the type of family unit that causes census takers to develop stomach ulcers. His father, Paul, was a bit of a free spirit, which is how it came to be that he fathered Coates and his six siblings with four different women. Despite this peculiar scenario, Paul was an active, present father in all his kids' lives. Coates certainly had his share of issues growing up in a tumultuous corner of Baltimore, but as he writes in his new memoir, "The Beautiful Struggle," his father was a source of security and stability in a neighborhood subject to rampant, random violence. "I don't know if there's an environmental explanation for why my father was the way he was," says Coates, 33. "For some reason, he just took being a father really seriously."

The engaged black father is an elusive character in popular culture. The percentage of black children living in fatherless homes—roughly 50 percent—has perpetuated an orthodoxy that black men are irresponsible and indifferent to fatherhood. Authors such as Coates are in a position to change that. In addition to "Struggle," last year saw the release of two photo-essay books, Carol Ross's "Pop" and Rachel Vassel's "Daughters of Men," which aimed to show black men celebrating their love for their children.

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July 6, 2008

Fake Residency

Amy Merrick & Joe Barrett:

Some school districts, hoping to control costs and prevent overcrowding, are intensifying efforts to make sure students actually live where they are registered.

Districts from Florida to California are hiring private investigators, creating anonymous tip lines and imposing penalties when they believe people have registered at false addresses. The measures often are spurred by parents who feel they pay a premium in property taxes to get their children into good schools.

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Bar to Hit No Child Law Rising

Crystal Owens:

Georgia is one 23 states that likely will be hard-pressed to make needed improvements under the No Child Left Behind Act before the law's 2014 achievement deadline, according to a report released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy.

The center issued its report at the midway point of the 2002 NCLB law, which requires states to bring all students to grade-level proficiency in reading and math by 2014 and allows each state to set up its own track to get there.

Georgia opted for the backloaded approach, which requires less progress in the early years followed by substantially higher gains closer to the deadline.

Now, some states will need to increase the percentage of students reaching proficiency on state assessments by 10 points or more each year in the six years left to meet the NCLB goals, the report said.

"Many states may have originally set lower achievement goals for the first few years under NCLB in hopes of getting systems into place or gaining some flexibility from Washington later on," Jack Jennings, president and CEO of the Center on Education Policy, said in a statement released Tuesday. "But right now, they are still on the hook for the academic equivalent of a mortgage payment that is about to balloon far beyond their current ability to pay."

But even those states that took an incremental approach to hitting achievement targets also will face difficulties in reaching 100 percent proficiency, the report said.

Related: 156 Wisconsin Schools Fail to Meet No Child Left Behind Standards.

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Crime & College: Off-Campus Incidents aren't always reported

Marc Parry:

That rape made headlines. But if you're a UAlbany student or parent, chances are you wouldn't know about many other crimes. Most don't appear in the data UAlbany reports to the federal government. Records show many failed to trigger e-mail alerts to students.

A Times Union investigation of the UAlbany off-campus crime problem spotlights a gap in the federal law that forces colleges nationwide to disclose crime data. That law, the Clery Act, holds schools accountable only for campuses, noncampus buildings such as fraternity houses, and adjacent public property like sidewalks.

The U.S. Department of Justice reports that 93 percent of violent crimes against college students occurred off campus. But even if students are repeatedly robbed and assaulted blocks from the college, a school has no legal obligation to report the crimes or warn students.

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July 5, 2008

Pressures Mount for Chief Of Prince William Schools

Ian Shapira:

After a school year marked by academic and administrative controversy, Prince William County Superintendent Steven L. Walts retains rock-solid School Board support as he seeks to raise the reputation of Virginia's second-largest school system. But his relationships with many parents have fractured, and some local officials wonder when, if ever, test scores will rise to levels found among the county's neighbors.

Hundreds of parents protested an elementary math program Walts championed, prompting board members to reevaluate it. Two of the county's top-performing high schools and a third of its elementary schools remain overcrowded. Teachers in Prince William continue to earn less than those in neighboring counties.

Test scores from Walts's third year are not yet public. But results from the first two after his 2005 arrival were uneven: SAT and state test scores remained among Northern Virginia's lowest. The decline in the county's average SAT score -- from 1504 to 1486, by far the steepest drop among the area's major districts -- meant that Prince William continued to lose ground to Fairfax, Loudoun and Arlington counties.

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Detroit School Officials OK Budget, Avoid Shutdown

Chastity Pratt Dawsey:

The Detroit Board of Education averted a possible shutdown in its operations by voting 9-2 shortly after 7:30 tonight to approve a two-year budget that includes nearly $522 million in spending cuts intended to get the district out of deficit.

But many specifics of how the savings would be realized — particularly $70 million in union concessions and an undetermined number of school closings — still must be addressed by Detroit Public Schools officials.

Under the plan, DPS would lay off about 818 teachers and 900 other workers, in addition to eliminating 142 vacant administrative jobs and cutting $81 million in non salary spending.

Recommendations to privatize social workers and psychologists were abandoned, but 30 of the 257 social workers will be laid off and 4 of 101 psychologists, according to a budget summary. That recommendation had set off a hail storm of complaints from the ranks and some parents who do not want to see a reduction in services to the special education and troubled students.

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Police, sheriff's units tackle growing Seattle-area gang problem

Jennifer Sullivan & Lauren Vane:

Tearing through the winding streets of the Central Area and Rainier Valley at 70 mph last Friday night, Seattle gang detectives Jim Dyment and Tom Mooney experienced an unsettling déjà vu — it was the third shooting they had responded to in a week.

As they drew near the scene of a drive-by shooting, Dyment and Mooney saw a group of officers gathered around five teens who sat handcuffed on a sidewalk in the Rainier Beach neighborhood. The hands of two teens were eventually wrapped in brown-paper sacks to protect any telltale gunpowder residue.

Dyment, a sergeant who has spent years investigating drugs, prostitutes and youth violence, muttered to no one in particular: "Being a gangster is a young man's sport."

And chasing gang members is becoming a full-time priority for police officers and sheriff's deputies throughout the Puget Sound region, where authorities say gang membership is surging. From graffiti spray-painted on a mailbox in Kent's West Hill neighborhood to recent shootings at area shopping malls, police say crimes associated with gangs appear to be on the upswing.

Gangs & School Violence Forum.

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School Is Out, and Nutrition Takes a Hike

Tara Parker-Pope:

As my 9-year-old daughter began summer day camp last week, we talked about swimming rules, sunscreen and ... cheese fries.

It was at summer camp a few years ago that she first experienced the culinary joy of cheese fries, which can pack 800 or more calories in a serving. Her camp is typical of those around the country: days packed with archery, swimming and adventure climbing; menus packed with soft drinks, burgers, chicken nuggets and, once a week, cheese fries.

Camp food is just one of the summertime nutrition challenges for parents these days. While childhood health advocates often blame schools for poor nutrition and a lack of physical activity, the problem often gets worse in the summer. Last year, The American Journal of Public Health published a provocative study showing that schools may be taking too much of the blame for the childhood obesity epidemic.

Data from kindergarteners and first graders found that body mass index increased two to three times as fast in summer as during the regular school year. Minority children were especially vulnerable, as were children who were already overweight.

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Georgia notifies parents before releasing awful test scores

Laura Diamond:

Parents whose children failed the math test will be notified by local schools. The state requires eighth-graders to pass the reading and math exams to move to high school.

Students who failed math exams — as well as those who might have failed reading — can retake the exam this summer. Schools will provide optional free classes to get them ready. Students who failed the social studies exam don't face any consequences under Georgia law.

State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox said test scores in both subjects dropped because students took harder tests to match the state's tougher and more rigorous curriculum.

"When you raise standards and expectations, it is not unusual to see a temporary dip in the percent of students who are meeting those expectations," Cox wrote in a statement released Monday afternoon. "We have seen this in other grades and other areas of the curriculum."

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July 4, 2008

The idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth. An instructor at a “college of last resort” explains why.

Professor X:

I work part-time in the evenings as an adjunct instructor of English. I teach two courses, Introduction to College Writing (English 101) and Introduction to College Literature (English 102), at a small private college and at a community college. The campuses are physically lovely—quiet havens of ornate stonework and columns, Gothic Revival archways, sweeping quads, and tidy Victorian scalloping. Students chat or examine their cell phones or study languidly under spreading trees. Balls click faintly against »

bats on the athletic fields. Inside the arts and humanities building, my students and I discuss Shakespeare, Dubliners, poetic rhythms, and Edward Said. We might seem, at first glance, to be enacting some sort of college idyll. We could be at Harvard. But this is not Harvard, and our classes are no idyll. Beneath the surface of this serene and scholarly mise-en-scène roil waters of frustration and bad feeling, for these colleges teem with students who are in over their heads.

I work at colleges of last resort. For many of my students, college was not a goal they spent years preparing for, but a place they landed in. Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home. I can relate, for it was exactly this line of thinking that dictated where I sent my teaching résumé.

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Waukesha Mulls Closing Elementary Schools

Erin Richards:

The committee detailed each of the seven schools in its report and the pros and cons of closing the selected five. Another unexpected finding in the text: 23% of Waukesha students attend a school outside their attendance area, either for program purposes or by way of school choice.

Haessly said the School Board will receive a hard copy of the report this week and will likely choose a date to talk about the report in one or more special sessions at the board meeting next week.

After that, the administration and the School Board will likely form their own recommendations about which school or schools to close.

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Anti-Gang Education for Third & Fourth Graders

Katie Wang:

In a second floor classroom at St. Lima School in Newark today, 22 pupils were mulling over questions about anger.

What, they were asked, do they do if they are angry?

What makes them angry?

And what can they do to control their anger?
"Go to anger management class," suggested Sean Smart, a fourth-grader.

The real lesson, though, was about a topic that was never mentioned in class yesterday: gangs.

With street gangs recruiting at a younger age, law enforcement officials are trying to get to them sooner through the federally-funded Gang Resistance Education and Training program. The state parole board's gang unit began working with sixth graders two years ago, but then expanded it to third and fourth-graders this year.

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July 3, 2008

Juvenile courts can confuse kids, parents, report says

Hans Laetz:

Two years in the making, a report on California's juvenile courts warns that children and parents are often bewildered by what happens in courtrooms, and judges and attorneys don't always have access to all the information they need to make decisions.

The California Judicial Council's stem-to-stern inspection is the first full-scale examination of court procedures and effectiveness. Juvenile courts were established statewide in 1961.

Many courts are failing in their basic responsibility to make sure children and parents know what is happening to them, according to the report, which was released in April.

"A lot of it is as basic as a kid who doesn't understand what the word allegation' means," said Judge Brian John Back, who headed the examination. "And when we have a room full of prosecutors, defense lawyers all using numbers from penal codes, shorthand and jargon, the kids just cannot comprehend what has just happened to them," said Back, who spent six years as presiding judge at Ventura County's Juvenile Court. "Juveniles uniformly said, We have no idea what just happened in court.' There is an inability for them to know what judges and attorneys do."

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Welcome to Max's World

Mary Carmichael:

Bipolar disorder is a mystery and a subject of medical debate. But for the Blakes, it's just reality.

Max Blake was 7 the first time he tried to kill himself. He wrote a four-page will bequeathing his toys to his friends and jumped out his ground-floor bedroom window, falling six feet into his backyard, bruised but in one piece. Children don't really know what death is, as the last page of Max's will made clear: "If I'm still alive when I have grandchildren," it began. But they know what unhappiness is and what it means to suffer. On a recent Monday afternoon, Max, now 10, was supposed to come home on the schoolbus, but a counselor summoned his mother at 2:15. When Amy Blake arrived at school, her son gave her the note that had prompted the call. "Dear Mommy & Daddy," it read, "I am really feeling sad and depressed and lousy about myself. I love you but I still feel like I want to kill myself. I am really sad but I just want help to feel happy again. The reason I feel so bad is because I can't sleep at night. And dad yells at me to just sleep at night. But, I can't control it. It is not me that does control it. I don't know what controls it, but it is not me. I really really need some help, love Max!!!!! I Love you Mommy I Love you Daddy."

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The Third World Challenge

Bob Compton, via a kind reader's email:

ersonally, I know that China and India are not “Third World” countries, but that is because I’ve traveled to those countries and I deeply admire their cultures and their people.

The inspiration for the name “Third World Challenge” came a statement made to me by a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education when I showed my film Two Million Minutes for the HGSE faulty. “We have nothing to learn from education systems in Third World countries,” he intoned with much gravitas, “Much less a Third World country that lacks freedom of speech.” To my surprise, no other faculty member rose to challenge that statement.

While I certainly expected a more open-minded and globally aware audience at Harvard, I have now screened my film around the country and a surprisingly large segment of the American population believes India and China’s K-12 education systems are inferior to that of the United States. While no American makes the statement with the boundless hubris of a Harvard professor, the conclusion often is the same – America is number one in education and always will be.

This of course is not true. American students’ academic achievement has been declining vis-à-vis other developed countries for more than 20 years. What is now surprising and worrisome is US students are even lagging the developing world.

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Quiz: Which Is a Greater Distraction For Milwaukee Students?

Democrats for Education Reform.

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Superintendent: Bad tenured teachers hard to fire

Frank Eltman:

Few people know better than school superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer that disciplining a tenured teacher can be a long and expensive process.

An English teacher in his Long Island district remains on the payroll, earning an annual salary of $113,559, even after pleading guilty earlier this month to drunken driving charges _ her fifth DWI arrest in seven years.

The teacher will remain on paid leave at least until a disciplinary hearing in August, and it will be up to an impartial arbitrator to decide whether she needs to be fired as she faces a likely prison sentence.

"It is very frustrating that the process takes so long," Gerstenlauer conceded.

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State funding helps fuel preschool boom

Greg Toppo:

Lisa Downs Henry's father and stepmother opened Downs Preschool in 1984 as a private day care center in Watkinsville, Ga. Business was good, but it really took off in 1995 after the state approved state lottery receipts to pay for pre-kindergarten classes.
The family converted the day care center into a preschool, which has since become a kind of institution in Oconee County, an hour's drive east of Atlanta. Of 12 preschool classes countywide, Downs boasts seven.

Each fall, Henry, the school's director, welcomes a new class of 140 children, all 4-year-olds, all attending tuition-free.

"Since it's state-funded, you just don't have to hound parents about money," she says.

Related: Missed opportunity for 4K. I've heard that there has been some discussion regarding 4K and a potential fall, 2008 Madison School spending referendum. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, given the short amount of time between now and November.

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July 2, 2008

Swedish school cites discrimination in seizing birthday party invitations

AP:

Officials at a school in Sweden have confiscated birthday invitations handed out in class by an eight-year-old boy.

The reason: they see it as a matter of discrimination.

A Swedish newspaper says the school in Lund, southern Sweden, seized the invitations because the boy failed to invited two boys because they were not his friends.

The newspaper Sydsvenskan quotes officials as saying they had a duty to prevent discrimination.

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Education board swings into action after 900 schools record less than 30% results

Shubhlakshmi Shukla:

Committees comprising DEOs inspect schools to find out the exact reason behind poor performance.

For the first time, the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary School Education Board (GSHSEB) has initiated a third party inspection of its schools in every districts. The move comes after 900-odd granted secondary schools reported 0 to 30 per cent results in the recent board exams.

To ensure fairness, committees comprising district education officers are checking on the schools of other districts to find out the exact reason for their poor performance. The lack of infrastructure, bad teaching quality and economic background of the students are being seen as the possible reasons for the poor results. The committee will submit its report to the GSHSEB.

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Education formula helps rich schools get richer

Lynn Moore:

She wakes up in her suburban home, has breakfast and jumps into her mom's car for a ride to school each morning.

He struggles to rouse himself off a bed of blankets on the floor, grabs the same clothes he wore yesterday and, with an empty stomach, starts his walk to school.

When she sits in her seat in her third-grade classroom, she brings a wealth of life experiences: soccer games and ballet; spring breaks in Florida; summers at a cottage on the lake; weekends spent at the zoo or museum.

He brings experiences, too: baby-sitting for his siblings; worrying about whether this will be the night the landlord kicks his family out; dreading the summer when he can't rely on regular meals like the ones his school provides.
Two children. Two different worlds.

And two entirely different schools. Hers gets more than $12,000 per student in funding. His gets $5,000 per student less.

This is a powerful issue. Incoming Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad's former district, Green Bay spends $11,269 per student while Madison spends $13,201 according to a recent Isthmus article. More here.

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Sent home: The suspension gap

James Walsh:

Black students are far more likely to be suspended from school than are their white classmates -- and Minnesota's disparity in suspensions is twice the national average. Why? What are the consequences?

Keenan Hooper likes to joke around and admits he has a motormouth. He also admits to getting into trouble again and again with teachers weary of his antics. School officials have sent him home more times than Keenan or his mom can count. ¶ So often, in fact, during his past couple years at Jackson Middle School in Champlin that he was referred to special education for a "behavioral disability" and saw his grades plummet.

This is not what Keisha Hooper wants for her son, who is black. She said she has asked how sending him away is helping.

"Teachers need order in the classroom, I agree," Keisha Hooper said. "I think where we part ways is that they seem to lose patience with the black kids more than they do the white."

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An Interview with Janie Feinberg and Delia Stafford: On-going research stresses that the single most important factor in the classroom is ....

Michael Shaughnessy:

On-going research stresses that the single most important factor in the classroom is the quality of the teacher. Teachers being the most important variable, have a major impact on a student's success or their failure. Delia Stafford and Janie Feinberg have spent the majority of their professional lives ensuring that students get the best teachers.Ms. Stafford, president of the Haberman Educational Foundation, teaches research-based strategies to assist school districts identify teachers and principals of excellence. Ms. Feinberg, president of JP Associates,provides ongoing staff support in classrooms to assist teachers via her exemplary coaching strategies.In this interview, they respond to a number of questions about teacher quality, teacher evaluation and alternative certification.

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Bringing Potential Dropouts Back From the Brink

Juli Charkes:

ON the morning of her Regents Exam in English language arts earlier this month, Sheile Echie-Davis, an 11th grader at Roosevelt High School, pointed to a blemish just below the swirls of pink and purple polish that covered her long fingernails and explained its meaning. “I’ve been writing so much, I’m getting bruises from holding my pencils,” she said, her tone conveying pride rather than concern that the results of weeks of intense studying were so visible.

Sheile, 16, expected to do well on the exam, judging by her past results: She scored 88 percent on her Regents Exam in United States history last year, even though the subject is her least favorite.

Three years ago, Sheile was an unlikely candidate for academic success given her chronic truancy from school. Skipping class regularly led to her having to repeat eighth grade in her Brooklyn middle school. Parental pressure and visits from truancy officers did little to budge her belief that the classroom was not where she belonged. Dropping out, she said, was a foregone conclusion.

Related: a look at Madison dropout data, including those with advanced abilities.

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July 1, 2008

Marquette’s new engineering school will focus on creating a collaborative culture and produce grads and marketable ideas.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:

The spark plug igniting this creative combustion is engineering school Dean Stan Jaskolski, who returned to his alma mater five years ago after retiring as chief technology officer at Eaton Corp. and a stint on the board of the National Science Foundation.

Jaskolski is re-engineering the engineering program with money, innovation and collaboration. The new engineering complex will link up faculty and students from all levels and disciplines, along with sales and marketing students and labs. Out of this intellectual stew, Jaskolski believes, will come a better prepared, more innovative engineering graduate. The school has raised $60 million out of the $100 million needed to build the complex.

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Wisconsin’s improved performance on a noted ranking of science and technology is a plus. But the state still must work harder to turn good ideas into jobs.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial:

Wisconsin is far better positioned in the knowledge economy than it was four years ago, with larger pools of risk capital and better coordination of the state’s best research.

That's one way to read a new report from the well-respected Milken Institute. The state finished five spots higher at No. 22 in Milken's State Technology and Science Index (www.jsonline.com/765102).

But the state's policy-makers and business leaders must figure out how to turn more of the state's best ideas into jobs across the state, not just in Madison. And perhaps how better to tap the wealth of intellectual property in southeastern Wisconsin.

While Wisconsin moved up five notches, it still ranks only middling overall and still lags far behind on some of the measures. Furthermore, it's arguable how much such state-by-state rankings tell us in a world where the competitor as easily could be in Bangalore as in Buffalo.

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A $53 trillion problem
The nation’s failure to address runaway spending on Medicare and Social Security is threatening our standard of living.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Imagine taking out a mortgage for a whopping $455,000 but getting no house in exchange. Just a monthly payment.

Who would do such a thing? The federal government would -- to you.

Federal commitments -- mostly for Medicare and Social Security -- totaled $53 trillion as of Sept. 30, or $455,000 for every U.S. household, and those commitments will grow rapidly over the next few years as more baby boomers retire and begin to draw benefits.

In 20 years, all of the government’s revenues will be needed just to pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the national debt. Unchecked, government profligacy will put more pressure on the slumping dollar, could lead to sharply higher interest rates and could result in higher prices for oil and food. As our debt grows -- half of it now is held by foreign creditors such as China -- the nation’s fiscal defenses are weakened.

John Schmid has more:
"Congress does not require itself to tell you what the long-term picture is," said Stuart Butler of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Butler and three other think tank analysts from across the ideological spectrum appeared in Milwaukee on Monday on the latest leg of their Fiscal Wake-Up Tour, addressing a crowd of over 200 business leaders and students. Their message: America is accumulating a dangerous level of national debt with little debate by its elected leaders on its consequences.

The tour started more than two years ago and has visited 40 cities. The stop in Milwaukee was meant to bring the message to a key battleground state in the 2008 presidential election.

......

An uninformed populace makes it easy to blame scapegoats and create distractions, with candidates saying they’ll eliminate budget waste and make the problem go away, Butler said. All concur that the U.S. mathematically cannot grow its way out of difficult budget choices.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama are well aware of the numbers even if neither addresses the underlying problems, the speakers agreed.

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Stats show alarming growth in violent racial and girl-on-girl incidents, including Blair’s ‘Day of Six Fights’

Andre Coleman:

The expulsion of four elementary school students for bringing knives onto campus and a rise in violence involving female African-American students have left city and school officials scrambling for solutions.

Records obtained by the Pasadena Weekly show that more than half of the 31 students expelled from the start of the school year through March were African American, and 11 of those 17 kids were girls, including five former students of Blair International Baccalaureate Magnet School who were involved in what has come to be known by teachers, students and administrators as “The Day of Six Fights” on Feb 18.

Although all those incidents involved weapons or violence or both, and a multijurisdictional board had been working since October on combating instances of youth- and gang-related violence, that information was not shared with the former 14-member Committee on Youth Development and Violence Prevention — even though that board included two sitting members of the Board
of Education, which ultimately approved all of the expulsions.

Further, the Pasadena Unified School District has few programs in place to address the rise in violence and no facilities available to help with the increase in expulsions from the district’s elementary schools.

The Madison School District's Security Coordinator, Luis Yudice mentioned increased school violence involving girls during meeting on West High School / Regent area neighborhood crime last fall.

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School Questions Rarely Answered, or Even Asked

David Kirkpatrick:

WHY is it that significant reform is opposed with the claim that research is needed, yet proposals to conduct such research are also opposed?

WHY does the present system not only lack a research base but much of it functions in direct contradiction to research findings?

WHY, for example, do we educate students by building a box called a school, inside of which are little boxes called classrooms, occupied by students in rows facing the front of the room, where an adult talks 75-80% of the time;
that is, the adult talks three to four times as much as all of the students combined?

WHY does secondary schooling use arbitrary time blocks after each of which students move to another room for a separate subject of instruction?

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Schools Promote Students Despite Widespread Failure

Arizona Daily Star:

Thousands of Tucson-area middle and high school students who fail key subjects continue to progress through Pima County's largest school districts every year toward graduation, a 10-month investigation by the Arizona Daily Star has found.

In the 2006-07 school year alone, nine in 10 students were moved to the next grade level, but data show that nearly a third of them failed basic courses in English, math, science or social studies. At least 94,000 students failed essential classes during the past six years.

The analysis confirms what has essentially been an open secret in education for years, what critics call social promotion, and shows it is pervasive throughout Tucson's schools.

The practice is not only causing major academic problems now, but is setting up what could be a major blow to the region's economy.

The underlying problem, experts say, is low student achievement compounded by the lack of concrete promotion policies and systemic pressure not to flunk children.

The Star's analysis found, that because grade inflation is likely occurring in Tucson-area schools, not only are thousands of children being socially promoted every year, but many other students are receiving passing grades they may not deserve.

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Audit: Praise for Minnesota charter schools' finances but pause on academics

Norman Draper:

A report from the Minnesota legislative auditor's office says test scores are lower than average and the schools can use more oversight. It urged legislators to tighten the controls.

Minnesota's charter schools need more oversight and post poorer test scores than their regular district school brethren, but have made big strides toward financial health, according to a report released Monday by the office of the legislative auditor.

The report offered a mixed bag of pluses and minuses for Minnesota's 143 charter schools, which have higher turnover and much higher populations of minority and low-income students than regular schools. The report's authors termed oversight of charter school operations and finances "unclear and often quite complicated," and called for legislation to tighten controls.

Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor:
We evaluated the performance, oversight, and accountability of charter schools. We found that, in general, charter schools do not perform as well as district schools; however, after accounting for relevant demographic factors and student mobility rates, the differences in student performance were minimal. Additionally, we found that charter school oversight responsibilities are not clear, leading to duplication and gaps in oversight. We recommend the Legislature clarify the roles of the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and sponsors (organizations that authorize, monitor, and evaluate charter schools) and that MDE implement standards for sponsors. We also recommend that the Legislature strengthen conflict of interest laws for charter school boards.

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American High Schools “Not Properly Preparing Kids For Life”

Nicolette Kuff:

A poll conducted by the Associated Press has found that more than half of people polled claim that U.S. high schools are falling short when it comes to readying students for adulthood. In addition, the same number of American’s polled believe that schools are focusing too much on some subjects and neglecting others, leading to an unbalanced education and a lack of “survival skills” needed for life after high school.

“When you get out of high school, what are you educated to do?” Mused California firefighter Jamie Norton. “A lot of kids, when they get out of school, are kind of lost.”

The AP poll revealed that parents from a minority group tend to believe that their children are receiving an education than they actually are. Three-fourths of adults polled also claimed that their children’s schools were emphasizing the wrong subjects – music, art, English – and not spending enough time on “important” subjects, such as math or biology. Parents are also frustrated by the seeming lack of assistance available during school hours for children who may be struggling with math, and are often unwilling to dedicate time at home to work on their children’s math homework.

Most individuals polled claimed that the U.S. is far behind other world countries when it comes to education. In reality, U.S. students fall somewhere in the middle when compared to students from other countries.

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Art Rainwater Retires

Channel3000:

Madison school Superintendent Art Rainwater is officially off the clock. After 14 years of work in Madison, Rainwater stepped down from his post at noon on Monday.

"This will be the first year that I haven't been involved with school since 1948, so it's been my whole life," Rainwater told WISC-TV.

Rainwater came to Madison in 1994 as deputy Superintendent.

He said all it took was a visit to the farmers' market on the Saturday before his interview for him to realize he was home.

He took the helm as superintendent in 1999.

"I always felt it was a position that I could do the most, with the most children," said Rainwater. "I think that's certainly what drove me to be a superintendent."

Much more on Art Rainwater here.

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School system retirees 'double dip' with waiver

Tracy Jan:

Nearly 100 retired educators in the Commonwealth were allowed to earn their full salaries while collecting full pensions in the past school year, a growing practice critics call state-sanctioned "double dipping."

The retirees collectively made more than $5 million on the job while taking home $5.5 million in pension payments, according to information obtained by the Globe.

The Globe review found that the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education routinely approved these special arrangements and frequently ignored its own guidelines that require school districts to provide proof that they advertised for the position and were unable to find other qualified candidates.

Critics say the practice, which was designed to make it easier for districts to fill hard-to-staff positions, leaves the door open for abuse, enticing a pool of well-connected retirees to move from one job to the next or stay indefinitely in a position that should have been filled by a nonretiree. In some cases, school districts have been allowed to continue rehiring the same retiree rather than readvertising for the position each year and providing fresh proof that they could find no one else to fill the spot, another state requirement.

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Education Reform: How to learn the right lessons from other countries' schools

The Economist:

THE children at Kulosaari primary school, in a suburb of Helsinki, seem unfazed by the stream of foreign visitors wandering through their classrooms. The head teacher and her staff find it commonplace too—and no wonder. The world is beating a path to Finland to find out what made this unostentatious Nordic country top of international education league tables. Finland’s education ministry has three full-time staff handling school visits by foreign politicians, officials and journalists. The schools in the shop window rotate each year; currently, Kulosaari is on call, along with around 15 others. Pirkko Kotilainen, one of the three officials, says her busiest period was during Finland’s European Union presidency, when she had to arrange school visits for 300 foreign journalists in just six months of 2006.

Finland’s status as an education-tourism hot spot is a result of the hot fashion in education policy: to look abroad for lessons in schooling. Some destinations appeal to niche markets: Sweden’s “voucher” system draws school choice aficionados; New Zealand’s skinny education bureaucracy appeals to decentralisers. Policymakers who regard the stick as mightier than the carrot admire the hard-hitting schools inspectorate and high-stakes mandatory tests in England (other bits of Britain have different systems).

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Ho-Chunk Miss Gambling Payment to the State of Wisconsin

Wisconsin State Journal:

The Ho-Chunk tribe missed an initial deadline Monday to pay an estimated $72 million in gambling money that state officials are counting on to help balance an already stressed state budget.

It's now been more than two years since the tribe, locked in a legal battle with the state over its gambling compact, has made any payments on its casino operations.

The lingering dispute raises the question of whether the state will receive nearly $100 million in estimated payments expected by June 2009 in time to prevent a gaping hole in a budget that could force lawmakers to raise taxes, cut services or borrow money to make up the difference.

Patrick Marley & Stacy Forster:
The tribe continues to offer expanded games such as poker and roulette that were agreed to in the 2003 compact, but it has stopped making the payments that were also required under that deal.

Doyle said the tribe owes the payments and that state officials will continue to pursue enforcement efforts in federal court — the only recourse available to Wisconsin under federal Indian gaming laws.

“Every other tribe in the state has paid it, and the fact (is) the Ho-Chunk just haven’t, but we believe it’s owed,” Doyle said.

Thomas Springer, a lobbyist for the tribe, said the Ho-Chunk have been trying to resolve the matter ever since the Supreme Court ruled on another tribe’s casino agreement. That decision in effect invalidated the Ho-Chunk’s agreement with the state, he said.

Another item to ponder with respect to potential changes in redistributed state tax dollars for education.

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